Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission --
Summary of Wisconsin Court Decision relating to Unemployment Insurance


Subject: James B. Lindberger v. State of Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Board and Superconductivity, Inc., Case 00 CV 1798 (Wis. Cir. Ct., Dane Co., March 29, 2001)

Digest Codes: MC 630.14   PC 714.10

The employee, an assembler, was discharged after it was discovered that he had stolen thousands of dollars worth of property and materials from his employer. He asserted that he suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which caused him to engage in "hoarding" behavior and that this caused him to steal, so that he should not be found to have done so intentionally. The Department Deputy, Appeal Tribunal and LIRC all rejected the employee’s explanation and found that he had been discharged for misconduct. On appeal, the employee pointed to reports from medical experts which he had introduced at hearing and which stated that he had OCD which was related to hoarding and to his theft.

Held: Affirmed. Notwithstanding that LIRC has no expertise in mental health issues, it has decades of experience in deciding misconduct issues, which involve factual and value determinations, and the court therefore gives great weight to LIRC’s decision. On the merits, the court holds that LIRC properly discounted the employee’s own claims that he was unable to resist the urge to steal; expert medical opinion is necessary to support a finding as to whether a given action is caused by an individual’s psychological disorder. LIRC properly took into account the evidence that the employee knew that he was stealing and that he had been fired from a previous job for stealing yet did not bring up the problem of his stealing with his employer or even with his treating psychologist. The court observes that the employee’s medical evidence was ambiguous on the degree of the connection between the employee’s OCD and his stealing from the employer: one expert stated that the OCD "predisposed" the employee to theft; the other referred to the stealing as being "related to" an "irresistible compulsion to hoard". LIRC could find, on the evidence here, that it was not established that the employee was unable to control his stealing from the employer. Where it was thus found that the stealing, although "related to" the OCD, was not caused by it, the conclusion that the discharge was for misconduct was reasonable, particularly in view of the employee’s failure to take steps to try to get help in changing his behavior


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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