Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission --
Summary of Wisconsin
Court Decision relating to Unemployment Insurance
Subject: Margaret Hallett v. LIRC and Selectstaff Services Inc, Case 02 CV 5899 (Wis. Cir. Ct., Milwaukee Co., December 27, 2002)
Digest Codes: MC 630.07 MC 689
The employee worked for over a year as a caregiver for a staffing agency, which provided care to the elderly and disabled. During most of her employment, the employee worked in the home of a single client. The employer's rules required her to keep information about patient care and other matters relating to the patient in an official log which was available to and regularly reviewed by the employer. However, she also began keeping a parallel log where she and other caregivers at the house kept communications that they intended to conceal from the employer. The notes included complaints from the client's son regarding the number of calls he was receiving from the employer requiring him to deal with rodents, air conditioning, and other household concerns. It included instructions not to tell the employer of these problems so as not to aggravate the client's son further. The log also recorded the son's comments concerning moving his mother to a nursing home and the likely impact of this on their jobs. The case manager became aware of this unofficial log book and the employee was discharged.
The Initial Determination found misconduct. The ALJ found that the employee had a good-faith belief that the information she was noting in the unofficial log did not relate to patient care and that she was not required to note the information in the official log; this error of judgment, he held, was not misconduct.
LIRC reversed the ALJ and found misconduct, not crediting the employee's statements that she thought her notes in the unofficial log were not relevant to patient care, and concluding that the employee was knowingly keeping from her employer relevant information which her employer might need and the lack of which might harm the employer's interests, in an attempt to further her own interests. The employee appealed.
Held: LIRC's decision is affirmed. The court rejects the employee's arguments that there was nothing secret about her unofficial log and that there was no evidence that the employer did not know of it The content of the a number of the entries clearly evidences a desire to keep the information from the employer. The employee substituted her judgment for that of her employer on what information about the client it was necessary for it to know, and she violated the employer's need for complete and accurate information about client care matters. The employee's contention that her unofficial log contained the same information as was entered in the official log, is contradicted by the record. Arguments that the decision was improperly based on hearsay are rejected, because hearsay is admissible in UI hearings and the decision was not based solely on the hearsay in the record.
Please note that this is a summary prepared by staff of the commission, not a verbatim reproduction of the court decision.
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