Court Opinion

ID: 9643243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:23:43.552578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:58.712518
License: Public Domain

KELLY, Associate Judge
(dissenting):
By letter of April 16, 1971, the Mayor-Commissioner of the District of Columbia informed petitioner’s counsel that after reviewing the record of the hearing and after consideration of written arguments filed on appeal, he proposed to adopt the findings and order of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board suspending petitioner from all officerships and/or directorships in certain corporations, suspending him from any active role in the management of the business of these corporations, and suspending all Alcoholic Beverage Control Board manager’s certificates theretofore issued to petitioner. Counsel was granted permission to submit exceptions or argument in writing to the Commissioner within ten days.
Thereafter, counsel filed written exceptions to the proposed order in which he alleged that the Board’s decision was “predicated on prejudice against the petitioner” rather than on the facts of the case. Serious charges of impropriety were made against one member of the Board centering on the substance of telephone conversations between that member and petitioner’s counsel and on the fact that the Board member had sent an allegedly unsolicited copy of the Board’s findings and order to the federal judge before whom criminal charges against petitioner, as well as related civil matters, were pending. A response from the Board to petitioner’s exceptions was requested and received by the Commissioner,1 who, thereafter, formally *879affirmed and adopted the Board’s findings. Copies of the responses were not sent to counsel when made and the copies sent to him thereafter at his request were not received until the petition for review was filed in this court. As a result, and in order to refute statements of one Board member to the Commissioner, the petition for review was supplemented with a transcript of one telephone conversation, prepared by the Internal Investigations Unit of the Metropolitan Police Department, which Unit had recorded the conversation with the consent of petitioner’s counsel.
Since we are apprised of this additional evidence which petitioner was effectively precluded from presenting on his appeal to the Commissioner, and since in my judgment the effect of this evidence upon the administrative proceedings should first be assessed by the Commissioner, I would remand the case for that purpose rather than decide it on the merits.

. Separate responses were made by the two Board members who decided the case. The third member of the Board had disqualified himself at the outset of the hearing.