Court Opinion

ID: 9628471
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:21:43.3733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:06.020201
License: Public Domain

WALTERS, Justice (dissenting, joined by SOSA, Senior Justice). If, as the majority says, Duke City Lumber Co., supra, requires the trial court to review the entire record produced at the administrative hearing to determine “on balance” (id., 681 P.2d at 719) whether the administrative decision is supported by substantial evidence, and we are bound to the same standard of review, then we cannot agree with the majority opinion. The entire record in this case will not support the Board’s decision. The Board heard no evidence; it did not read any transcript or listen to any tape recordings of the hearing. It relied entirely on the Hearing Officer’s report which summarized the testimony offered by witnesses at the hearing. The Hearing Officer made no finding of negligence on Jimenez’s part, and he made no recommendations whatever regarding Jimenez’s termination. Jimenez was fired on December 18, 1979, some time before it was learned that ten inmates had escaped before 7:00 p.m. and that only one inmate had later escaped during the time Jimenez was on duty at Tower 1. The warden, at the insistence of the Secretary of Corrections, had recommended firing Jimenez “based on the mass escape of eleven (11) inmates on December 9, 1979,” because “Officer Jimenez was not observent (sic) or alert and failed to detect unusual activity in his area of responsibility.” At the approximate time of the last inmate’s escape, Jimenez was checking 25 basketball players out of the front gate adjacent to his tower assignment location. A mirror, located in the tower, would permit a guard on duty in the tower and facing north to observe the yard area to his rear where the escape occurred. The justification for the inference that a single guard could check 25 persons through a gate adjacent to his tower post and, at the same time, observe through a mirror in the tower the 6-to-30-second activity of a single escapee occurring behind him, is not explained anywhere in the record. Indeed, the Hearing Officer found as a fact that Jimenez could not have seen the escape area “while he was engaged in providing Officer Harrison with a flashlight, while he was supervising the basketball players leaving through the front gate, and while performing other duties.” We said, more than half a century ago, that where the trial court makes its findings and conclusions based upon matters of record only, having heard no evidence nor observed the conduct and demeanor of any witnesses, that our review of the trial court’s findings would be to determine whether they are supported by a preponderance of the evidence submitted to the trial court. Bolles v. Pecos Irr. Co., 23 N.M. 32, 167 P. 280 (1917). The evidence in this case, when placed “on balance” with all findings of the hearing officer, far preponderates and outweighs any evidence of negligence or inefficient performance on the part of Jimenez. The trial court correctly so decided. Thus, under either the Duke City or the Bolles standards of review, and in accordance with the longstanding rules that the evidence will be viewed most favorably to the successful party and that a judgment of the trial court will be sustained if supported by the evidence, Lucas v. Lucas, 95 N.M. 283, 621 P.2d 500 (1980), the judgment of the trial court was proper and should be affirmed.