Court Opinion

ID: 9717292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:01:09.79985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.355905
License: Public Domain

*681SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(dissenting). I would dismiss this petition for review as having been improvidently granted. This case is of limited importance to the bar, bench, or public. It concerns the 1973 version of the Fair Employment Act. The Act has been extensively revised more than once since 1973. Furthermore, the court of appeals did not require the individual to be hired; it remanded the matter for further proceedings. The case does not fall within our published guidelines for granting review. Standards to Review Petitions to Appeal, 85 Wis. 2d xiii.
In any event, I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals. Sec. 111.32(5) (f), Stats. 1973, provides that an employer need not hire a person who because of a handicap is “unable to efficiently perform [the job] at the standards set by the employer.”1 In Bucyrus-Erie Co. v. ILHR Dept., 90 Wis. 2d 408, 423, 280 N.W.2d 142 (1979), the court held that the ability to perform efficiently “embraces the ability to perform without a materially enhanced risk of death, or serious injury to the employee or others in the future.”
I read the 1973 statute to place a burden on the employer to establish that its hiring criteria as applied to the applicant are reasonable under all the circumstances. In other words, the employer has the burden of showing that its hiring decision is one that a reasonable person of ordinary prudence would make, balancing the right of a handicapped person to obtain gainful employment “to the fullest extent practicable,” sec. 111.31(3), Stats. 1973, against the risk of harm *682to the handicapped person and to others. The standard of “reasonableness” (the “reasonable probability test,” as described in our cases) provides flexibility to permit due allowance to be made for the particular circumstances of the employment. The greater the likelihood of harm and the greater the severity of harm in case of an accident, the more stringent the job qualifications that the employer may apply to ensure safety.
Like the court of appeals, I see no need for a special legal test by which to gauge the hiring practices of a public service company. The majority opinion adopts the Boynton test, not the Bucyrus-Erie test, for Wisconsin Power and Light.2 It errs because it mistakenly interprets the Boynton case as recognizing a special standard of care for common carriers and then mistakenly concludes that Wisconsin Power and Light, an electric company, is also held to a special standard of care.
There is no special standard of care for common carriers or for public service companies. Common carriers and public service companies are held.to the same standard of care as everyone else: the reasonable person standard. As Dean Prosser explained, “None of these [common carrier] cases should logically call for any departure from the usual [due care] formula. What is required is merely the conduct of the reasonable man of ordinary prudence under the circumstances, and the greater danger, or the greater responsibility, is merely one of the circumstances, demanding only an increased amount of care.” Prosser, Torts, sec. 34, p. 181 (4th ed. 1971).3 See also Victorson v. Milwaukee and Suburban *683Trans. Corp., 70 Wis. 2d 336, 346, 234 N.W.2d 332 (1975).
I conclude that the 1973 statute sets forth one standard by which an employer’s hiring decision should be gauged: reasonableness. The application of the standard varies with the circumstances.
The majority also errs when it interprets the 1973 statute as allowing the employer to adopt a general rule that it will not hire a person who has epilepsy and as allowing the employer to refuse to consider the ability of the individual applicant. I conclude that the statute requires the employer to consider each applicant on the basis of his or her qualifications. People with epilepsy are not a homogeneous group. The disorder called epilepsy has a number of causes and affects sufferers differently. It is not possible to conclude from this record that all or substantially all of those affected would pose a risk under the circumstances presented here. See Amici Curiae Brief submitted by the Epilepsy Foundation of America, the Wisconsin Epilepsy Association, Inc., and the Wisconsin Coalition for Advocacy.
Fortunately the majority opinion is limited to the 1973 statute. In sec. 111.34(2) (b) (c), Stats. 1981-82, the legislature requires that “evaluation shall be made on an individual case-by-case basis and may not be by a general rule which prohibits the employment ... of handicapped individuals in general or a particular class of handicapped individuals.”
I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals and remand the matter to the Commission for further findings by the Commission in light of the proper standard.

 The Boynton “one more life test” is of dubious usefulness and, if it is retained at all, it should be limited to the facts of the Boynton case. Boynton Cab Co. v. ILHR Dept., 96 Wis. 2d 396, 291 N.W.2d 850 (1980).

 The special relation between a common carrier and its passengers does give rise to a special duty on the part of the common *683carrier to use due care to aid or protect the passengers, not a special standard of care. Restatement (Second) of Torts, sec. 314A (1964).