Court Opinion

ID: 9638563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:47:01.644897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:07.821831
License: Public Domain

James R. Cooper, Judge, concurring. I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion, and in its reasoning, only because the legislature has seen fit to require this Court to allow the Board of Review to weigh conflicting testimony of witnesses and determine credibility questions, even though the Board has had no more contact with the witnesses whose testimony is in conflict than has this Court. This is another classic example of a situation where the Appeal Tribunal referee, who actually saw the individuals, found in favor of the appellant. The Board, in the process of weighing “credibility”, never having seen the appellant, determined that his testimony was not as worthy of belief as that of the representatives of his employer. Although the result we reach in the case at bar is mandated by our standard of review, the standard of review on credibility questions makes no sense and is patently unfair to the prevailing party at the Appeal Tribunal level, whose credibility is discounted by a Board which has never had the opportunity to actually determine his credibility except from a cold record. For additional comments, see Hamby v. Everett, 4 Ark. App. 52, 627 S.W.2d 266 (1982) (Dissenting Opinion).