Court Opinion

ID: 9473200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:22:52.982387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:23.275957
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring, with whom NEWMAN, Circuit Judge, joins..
The presiding official determined that Mitehum committed some kind of an offense in refusing to work, even though he was too sick to work. This can only have been Mitchum’s omission to say he was sick — though he really was — on the occasion of his first refusal. The board may disbelieve Mitehum was ever sick at all, as our opinion charitably assumes. One cannot be sure, as the board suggests this by innuendo rather than direct statement. It may believe he got sick only after the first refusal, though before the second, or later in the nurse’s office, or the doctor’s. The only thing clear is that he was not sick badly enough, or else not soon enough, to satisfy the board. I join in the opinion because any alternative interpretation of the board’s cryptic remarks makes them even less reasonable.
Only the agency petitioned for review. Mitehum, in his appeal to this court, has not contested the appropriateness of the 30-day suspension. We do not, therefore, have to determine whether the efficiency of the service reasonably could be held to require a 30-day suspension.
The rule of employee behavior the case teaches is apparently that when you refuse to do a job on the just ground of being sick, you must say you are sick the first time you receive the order, not the second. Timing is all important. By violating this rule you cause an unedifying scene, and on TVA time to boot.
While the panel has elected to publish its decision, and I agree, I think that as a precedent it should be restricted to its own peculiar facts, or close to them.