Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission --
Summary of Wisconsin
Court Decision relating to Unemployment Insurance
Subject: Jermaine F. Walls v. LIRC and Cornwell Personnel Associates, Ltd.,
Case 05CV006013 (Wis. Cir. Ct., Milwaukee Co., January 31, 2006)
Digest Codes: PC 712.5
The employee timely requested a hearing, which was scheduled for
February 28, 2005. He was incarcerated beginning February 16, after his bail was
revoked for his failure to comply with the conditions of his release pending
trial on a burglary charge. He was in regular contact with his mother after
incarceration, but he never asked her to contact the hearing office on his
behalf, to see whether he could appear by telephone from jail or get a
postponement. He did send a letter of explanation to the hearing office, but
only mailed it on the day of the hearing, February 28. The commission held that
the employee did not have good cause for failing to appear at the hearing, for
two reasons. First, his incarceration was due to his failure to comply with the
conditions of his bail, and thus was his own fault. Second, despite opportunity
to do so, the employee made no attempt to timely contact the hearing office
after he was incarcerated.
Held: Affirmed. The court questioned the fairness of holding the employee’s
incarceration against him, but gave great weight deference to the commission’s
ruling and so ultimately accepted its reasoning on this point. (The court opined
that an individual’s underlying intentional conduct that happened to make the
individual too ill to attend a hearing, was no less blameworthy than that of an
employee who intentionally engages in conduct that results in his or her
incarceration.) As to the employee’s failure to have contacted the hearing
office, the court held that that failure, given that the employee had
opportunity to call, established that his nonappearance was inexcusable (“common
sense and good manners dictate that a person not be excused from attending an
obligation that one cannot attend but which one knows in advance one cannot
attend and from which one fails to excuse oneself in advance”).
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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