City of Hartford v. Connecticut State Bd. of Mediation and Arbitration

• Citation: 557 A.2d 1236,211 Conn. 7
• Decision Date: 25 April 1989
• Docket Number: No. 13464,13464
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: CITY OF HARTFORD v. CONNECTICUT STATE BOARD OF MEDIATION AND ARBITRATION et al.

Page 1236

557 A.2d 1236

211 Conn. 7

CITY OF HARTFORD v. CONNECTICUT STATE BOARD OF MEDIATION AND ARBITRATION et al.

No. 13464.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Dec. 15, 1988.

Decided April 25, 1989.

Stephen F. McEleney, Hartford, for appellant (defendant City of Hartford Professional Employees Ass'n).

H. Maria Cone, Asst. Corp. Counsel, with whom, on the brief, was Eunice S. Groark, Corp. Counsel, Hartford, for appellee (plaintiff).

Before PETERS, C.J., and ARTHUR H. HEALEY, SHEA, GLASS and HULL, JJ.

HULL, Judge.

This case concerns the validity of the remedy portion of an arbitration award by the named defendant Connecticut state board of mediation and arbitration (board) in favor of the defendant City of Hartford Professional Employees Association (CHPEA) upon a finding by the board that the plaintiff city of Hartford violated its collective bargaining agreement with CHPEA. Pursuant to General Statutes § 52-418, ¹ the city filed an application in the Superior Court to vacate the arbitration award as to remedy only. The trial court granted the city's application, holding that the remedy portion of the arbitration award was unenforceable as against public policy. CHPEA has appealed that judgment. We conclude that the remedy ordered by the board does not violate public policy and therefore set aside the judgment of the trial court and remand with direction to deny the application.

The relevant facts are not in dispute. Pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement with the city of Hartford, CHPEA is the exclusive bargaining agent representing all professional employees working for the city. In 1985, CHPEA filed a grievance on behalf of two of its members, Janet LePage and Fay Williams. ² CHPEA alleged that the city had breached the rules contained in the collective bargaining agreement governing the promotion of CHPEA members when it promoted a "favored" employee to a position in the department of social services for which the grievants were passed over.

A full hearing was held before a three member arbitration panel of the board consisting of a representative each of management, labor and the public. The arbitrators framed the issue as follows: "Did the City of Hartford violate the Contract by the procedures it used in conducting the promotion and filling [of] the Senior Administrative Analyst position in the Site Services Workfare Unit of the Department of Social Services between November 15, 1984 and July 22, 1985? If so, what shall the remedy be?"

A full understanding of the arbitrators' decision on this matter requires that we first discuss briefly the procedures used by the city in selecting and promoting its employees. The selection and promotion of city employees is governed by the city's personnel rules and regulations, which are promulgated by the director of personnel and the personnel board pursuant to powers granted them under the city charter. These rules are designed to carry out the provisions of the city charter that endorse a policy of "merit selection," i.e., the selection and promotion of city employees upon the basis of merit rather than favoritism. ³ This is accomplished primarily through the use of competitive examinations to fill vacancies in higher positions.

Typically, under the city's personnel rules, qualified candidates vying for a promotion in a given department are required to take an examination that is designed to test the capacity and fitness of the candidates to discharge the duties of the position to be filled. The candidates are then ranked according to their test scores. Thereafter, the names of the three highest ranking candidates are submitted to the head of the department, who is granted the sole discretion to award the position to any of the three. This requirement that the names of the three highest ranking candidates for a position be submitted to the department head, the so-called "rule of three," is expressly set forth in chapter XVI, § 2(b), of the city charter and has been incorporated into rule VIII of the city's personnel rules and regulations.

In their decision, the arbitrators made the following findings. In November, 1984, the city of Hartford through its department of personnel posted a "promotional opportunity" for four positions as senior administrative analysts in the site services workfare unit of the department of social services (department). Testing for the positions was open to all employees of the department who met certain eligibility requirements fixed by the director of personnel. On January 17, 1985, the city held an examination for the positions. The candidates were ranked according to their test scores and from these rankings the city established an "eligibility list" comprised of twelve candidates. The grievants, LePage and Williams, were ranked fifth and sixth on the eligibility list, respectively. During March, 1985, the five highest ranking candidates on the list were interviewed for three of the four job openings. ⁴ The candidates ranked first, second and fourth on the list were selected for three of the openings. Candidate Karen Bailey, ranked third, and grievant LePage, ranked fifth, were not selected.

In order to fill the one remaining analyst position the city conducted a second round of interviews on May 14, 1985. The city interviewed grievant Williams, ranked sixth, Sharon Hunter, ranked seventh, and another candidate ranked eighth on the list. LePage and Bailey, who both ranked higher on the list than the three candidates interviewed by the city, were inexplicably not interviewed for this last opening. As it turned out, however, no one was awarded the position as a result of this second round of interviews. Instead, on May 28, 1985, the city posted a second "promotional opportunity" for the remaining analyst position, which requried a new round of competitive examinations. Unlike the first posting, however, which was open to all employees of the department, this second posting was restricted to employees of the department's site services workfare unit only. Since they were not employees of the workfare unit, Bailey, LePage and Williams were effectively precluded under the terms of the second posting from testing again for the final analyst position. Only two departmental employees, Sharon Hunter and Bienvenida Fernandez, both of the workfare unit, were eligible under the terms of the second posting to test a second time for the remaining analyst position. Based on this second examination, Hunter was awarded the position, despite the fact that the grievants both ranked higher than Hunter on the original eligibility list.

As a result of LePage and Williams being denied an opportunity to test for the remaining analyst position, CHPEA filed a grievance on their behalf claiming that the procedures used by the city in awarding the position violated the collective bargaining agreement between the parties. The dispute was subsequently submitted to arbitration.

In their decision, the arbitrators unanimously agreed that by limiting the second posting to workfare unit employees of the department only, the city had improperly denied the grievants an opportunity to test for the last available analyst position in violation of its personnel rules and regulations and the collective bargaining agreement. Having found a violation of the agreement, the arbitrators proceeded to fashion a remedy. The remedy agreed upon by the arbitrators ordered that LePage and Williams each be given an examination by the city and that the city award the analyst position "to the most qualified of the two candidates."

Dissatisfied with the remedy ordered by the arbitrators, the city filed an application in the Superior Court to vacate the arbitration award as to remedy only. General Statutes § 52-418. The trial court granted the city's application, holding that the remedy ordered by the arbitrators was unenforceable as against public policy since it did not adhere to the "rule of three" set forth in the city charter requiring that the names of the three highest ranking candidates be submitted to the department head for final selection. This appeal followed.

I

We first consider whether this appeal is properly before us. In its brief, CHPEA points out that the city's application to vacate the arbitration award filed in the Superior Court was "devoid of an allegation of violation of public policy or a request to vacate on that basis." Since the trial court's decision to grant the city's application rested exclusively on public policy grounds, CHPEA'S observation necessarily raises the question of whether it was within the trial court's jurisdiction to base its decision on an issue not expressly raised in the pleadings. See, e.g., Doublewal Corporation v. Toffolon, 195 Conn. 384, 390-91, 488 A.2d 444 (1985) (judgment must ordinarily be restricted to issues reasonably within the scope of the pleadings).

Although the city did not expressly claim in its application that the award should be vacated on the ground that it violated public policy, the city did allege that the award should be vacated because "[t]he arbitrators have exceeded their powers" in violation of General Statutes § 52-418(a)(4). We conclude that such an allegation is sufficient to include within it a claim relating to the invalidity of the arbitration award on public policy grounds. It was therefore within the trial court's jurisdiction to render judgment in favor of the city on that basis. Accordingly, the present appeal is properly before us. See Practice Book § 4001.

II

The principal issue on this appeal is whether the remedy portion of the arbitration award so clearly violated public policy that it was properly vacated by the trial court as exceeding the arbitrators' power under § 52-418(a)(4). Before we undertake our analysis of this issue, it is useful to identify the principles that govern our review of private consensual arbitration. "This court has for many years...