Barron v. Division of Employment Security

435 S.W.3d 654, 2014 WL 928875, 2014 Mo. App. LEXIS 248
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 11, 2014
DocketNo. WD 75934
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 435 S.W.3d 654 (Barron v. Division of Employment Security) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Barron v. Division of Employment Security, 435 S.W.3d 654, 2014 WL 928875, 2014 Mo. App. LEXIS 248 (Mo. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

Trida Barron’s employment with Lin-eare, Inc. was terminated in June 2012. She applied for unemployment compensation. Lineare protested the claim, contending that Barron had been discharged for misconduct. The Labor and Industrial Relations Commission found that Barron’s violations of Lineare’s attendance policy amounted to misconduct, and that she was therefore disqualified from receiving unemployment compensation benefits. Barron appeals. Because the Commission’s Decision fails to make factual findings concerning the justifications Barron offered for her attendance violations, the Commission’s decision is reversed, and the case is [656]*656remanded to the Commission for further factual findings, and for final disposition based on those findings.1

Factual Background

In May 2011 Barron was hired as a temporary employee by a company known as Med4Home. Although employed by Med4Home, Barron was assigned to work at Lineare as a customer service representative and pharmacy technician. Barron later accepted full-time employment directly with Lineare. She began working as a Lineare employee on September 6, 2011.

At the time that she was hired by Med4Home, Barron was also attending school. Barron informed both Med4Home and Lineare of her school schedule, and told them that the demands of her educational program would prevent her from maintaining a normal full-time work schedule. Lineare initially agreed to accommodate Barron’s school schedule.

Barron’s supervisor, Customer Service Manager Amy Ellis, testified that “originally [Barron’s] school schedule was supposed to go through December 2011,” but that “the time from her school just kept being prolonged for her graduation date.” Ellis testified that in February 2012, she informed Barron that Lineare could “no longer accommodate a special schedule for her based on her school schedule.”

In February 2012, Barron was cited for multiple violations of Lincare’s attendance policy, including non-attendance and tardiness for scheduled work shifts. In several instances, Ellis testified that Barron provided Lineare with no prior notice of her tardiness or non-attendance. Ellis testified that, due to her attendance problems in February, Barron received “final written warnings” on February 21 and again on February 27, 2012; the written warnings informed Barron that “if ... there w[ere] continued ... issues with her attendance that it could lead to her termination.”

Barron completed her educational program on March 17, 2012. After her graduation, Barron was late for work on four additional occasions: she was ten minutes late on May 22, 23, and 24, 2012; and on June 26, Barron was twenty-one minutes late to work. Ellis testified that Barron was given an additional final written warning on May 24. Following her tardiness on June 26, Barron’s employment was terminated on June 27, 2012.

Barron filed a claim for unemployment benefits. Lineare protested the claim. A deputy within the Division of Employment Security initially determined that Barron’s discharge was not the result of misconduct connected with work and that she was therefore eligible for unemployment compensation.

Lineare appealed to the Division’s Appeals Tribunal. The Tribunal held a telephone hearing on Barron’s claim, at which Barron, Ellis, and Lincare’s Human Resources Manager Teresa Swope each testified. Following the hearing, the Appeals Tribunal issued a Decision which found that Lineare had an attendance policy of which Barron was aware, and which she violated. The Tribunal accordingly found that Lineare had established a rebuttable presumption of misconduct pursuant to § 288.050.22; it also concluded that Bar[657]*657ron had failed to rebut this presumption. The Tribunal’s Decision held that Barron’s absences and tardiness constituted misconduct connected with work, which disqualified her from receiving unemployment benefits.

Barron applied to the Commission for review. The Commission affirmed the Appeals Tribunal’s decision, and adopted the Tribunal’s decision as its own. Barron appeals.

Standard of Review
Appellate review of a decision made by the Commission is governed by section 288.210. We may not reverse, remand, or set aside the Commission’s decision unless the Commission acted without or in excess of its powers, the decision was procured by fraud, the decision was not supported by the facts, or the decision was not supported by sufficient competent evidence in the whole record to warrant the making of or the denial of the award.
An appellate court must examine the whole record to determine if it contains sufficient competent and substantial evidence to support the award, ie., whether the award is contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence. In reviewing the Commission’s decision, an appellate court must view the evidence objectively, not in the light most favorable to the decision of the Commission. However, on matters of witness credibility and resolution of conflicting evidence, the appellate court defers to the Commission’s determinations.
While the appellate court gives deference to the Commission’s findings of fact, the court is not bound by the Commission’s conclusions of law or the Commission’s application of law to the facts.

Kimble v. Div. of Emp’t Sec., 388 S.W.3d 634, 638 (Mo.App.W.D.2013) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

Analysis

I.

In her first Point, Barron argues that there was not competent and substantial evidence in the record to support the Commission’s finding that the attendance policy she was found to have violated was in fact the applicable Lineare policy. We disagree.

The Missouri Employment Security Law provides that a claimant may be disqualified from receiving unemployment compensation benefits “[i]f a deputy finds that a claimant has been discharged for misconduct connected with the claimant’s work.” § 288.050.2. Misconduct is defined as

an act of wanton or willful disregard of the employer’s interest, a deliberate violation of the employer’s rules, a disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of his or her employee, or negligence in such degree or recurrence as to manifest culpability, wrongful intent or evil design, or show an intentional and substantial disregard of the employer’s interest or of the employee’s duties and obligations to the employer.

§ 288.030.1(23).

In 2006, the General Assembly amended § 288.050.3 to provide that an employee’s violation of an employer’s known attendance policy gives rise to a rebuttable presumption of misconduct. Section 288.050.3 provides:

Absenteeism or tardiness may constitute a rebuttable presumption of misconduct, regardless of whether the last incident alone constitutes misconduct, if the discharge was the result of a violation of the employer’s attendance policy, provided the employee had received knowl[658]*658edge of such policy prior to the occurrence of any absence or tardy upon which the discharge is based.

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Bluebook (online)
435 S.W.3d 654, 2014 WL 928875, 2014 Mo. App. LEXIS 248, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/barron-v-division-of-employment-security-moctapp-2014.