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

Subject: Lomack, Sylvester C.  v.  LIRC and Lehmanns Bakery, Case No. 00-CV-1763 (Wis. Cir. Ct., Racine Co, April 19, 2001)

Digest Codes: PC 731

The employee attempted to file, by mailing, a petition for commission review from an appeal tribunal decision denying benefits. The mailed petition was refused by the addressee (the Milwaukee Hearing Office) because it was 32 cents postage due (it bore only a single "H" series stamp, worth 1 cent). It was returned to the employee by the Postal Service, and he then re-mailed it with proper postage and it was then received by the Hearing Office. By this time, however, the postmark and the received date were both past the deadline for filing a timely petition. The employee asserted that he had in fact attached another stamp to the original petition for review and mailed it well before the deadline, and that the other stamp must have fallen off in the mail. The commission rejected this, stating that it found no indication whatsoever that any other postage had ever been on the envelope. On appeal to court, the employee argued that the petition did in fact travel through the mail and reach the Hearing Office, and he claimed that that showed that it must have had adequate postage on it at some point.

Held: Affirmed. The court agrees that nothing indicates that the letter had adequate postage on it before it was refused because it was postage due. The court observes that no recipient of mail is obliged to pay a shortcoming in postage in order to receive the mail. Placing proper postage on the petition had been within the control of the employee.

Please note that this is a summary prepared by staff of the commission, not a verbatim reproduction of the court decision.

[LIRC Decision]

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