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


Subject: Carlton Stovall v. LIRC and Professionally Speaking Inc., Case 02-CV-9557 (Wis. Cir. Ct., Milwaukee Co., January 8, 2003)

Digest Codes: PC 731

The employee appealed an ineligibility determination. He failed to appear at the July 8 hearing and a dismissal decision was issued. He filed a petition for commission review of that dismissal decision, but it was received two weeks after the July 30 deadline. In his petition, he asserted that he had been incarcerated on July 4 and had not been released until August 13, which was why he had missed the hearing and why his petition for review had been late. The commission dismissed the petition for review, concluding that the employee had not showed probable good cause that the reason for his having filed his petition late was a reason beyond his control. The employee appealed, asserting that he was indigent and without friends or relatives that would take a collect call, and that without the help of a social worker, only collect calls can be made from the jail. He argued that because he had suffered these severe restrictions on his ability to communicate with the outside world and had no outside ally to monitor or assist in his daily affairs, he thus unavoidably missed his appeal deadline.

Held: LIRC's decision to dismiss the petition for review is affirmed. The test for determining whether the petition could be accepted is whether the reason it was late was a reason beyond petitioner's control. The court finds that LIRC reasonably concluded that the employee was not completely prevented from making contact with the department, and that it was reasonable to conclude that the employee could have established some contact for purposes of changing the hearing date. The court can find nothing irrational in LIRC's decision.


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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