Bates v. Unemployment Appeals Com'n, 94-02198
| Decision Date | 26 May 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-02198,94-02198 |
| Citation | 655 So.2d 1242 |
| Parties | 101 Ed. Law Rep. 503, 20 Fla. L. Weekly D1290 Delta L. BATES, Appellant, v. UNEMPLOYMENT APPEALS COMMISSION, and Evangelical Christian School, Inc., Appellees. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Suzanne Harris, Florida Rural Legal Services, Inc., Lakeland, for appellant.
John D. Maher, Unemployment Appeals Com'n, Tallahassee, for appellee Com'n.
Delta Bates, a caregiver in the toddler room of Evangelical Christian School, was fired by the school for "not reporting to work for three days without notification." Upon review of her application for unemployment compensation benefits, the referee decided that the school had discharged Ms. Bates for misconduct connected with work. The Unemployment Appeals Commission upheld the referee's decision. We reverse the Commission; the referee was in error.
Ms. Bates was scheduled to work Monday, January 10, 1994, but she was ill with the flu. She did not have a phone in her apartment and she asked her mother to call and let her employer know she was ill. Ms. Bates stated at the hearing that her mother told the person who received her call that she would not call in again to update the school on her daughter's status. Ms. Hernandez, who received the call, testified that she was told Ms. Bates was ill and would call later. Ms. Bates did not communicate with the school the rest of the week. On January 14, 1994, she called in to ask that her check be released to a co-worker. On that day her supervisor sent her a letter advising that she had not reported to work for the prior three days without notification, and she was then fired.
The referee concluded that Bates had been terminated because "she failed to provide the employer with proper notification of her intentions to be absent from work for an entire week." The referee recognized Bates' testimony that her mother told the administrative assistant that her call on January 9, 1994 would be the only call for the entire week, and the referee did not reject that testimony. Because Ms. Bates had not called daily, the referee concluded that her failure to do so constituted misconduct connected with work.
The referee's report suggests that the finding of misconduct was based on the employer's policy requiring workers to call in on each day of absence from work, no matter what the circumstance. The record, however, reveals that, although such a policy existed, the employer's representative did not know whether Bates had received a copy of it. The school had never previously warned Ms. Bates about her absenteeism or her failure...
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Watson v. Summit Asset Management, LLC
...failure to notify his employer of his absence, under the circumstances, did not amount to misconduct. In Bates v. Unemployment Appeals Commission, 655 So.2d 1242 (Fla. 2d DCA 1995), the claimant, a caregiver in the toddler room of a Christian school, developed the flu on Monday. She did not......
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Vega v. Florida Unemployment Appeals, 3D02-932.
...under the statute and case law. At best, it was an isolated act of misjudgment on his part. See Bates v. Unemployment Appeals Comm'n, 655 So.2d 1242, 1243 (Fla. 2d DCA 1995) (reversing the denial of benefits based on the failure on the part of the employee to use good We therefore reverse t......