Johnson v. Brown, 392

• Decision Date: 06 November 1961
• Docket Number: No. 392,392
• Citation: Johnson v. Brown, 134 So.2d 388 (La. App. 1961)
• Parties: Woodrow W. JOHNSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Richard E. BROWN, Jr., Administrator, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

Page 388

134 So.2d 388

Woodrow W. JOHNSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v.Richard E. BROWN, Jr., Administrator, etc., et al Defendants-Appellees.

No. 392.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

Nov. 6, 1961.

Robert W. McHale, Lake Charles, for plaintiff-appellant.

Jerry H. Bankston and Marion Weimer, by Marion Weimer, Baton Rouge, John Henry LeBleu, Lake Charles, for defendants-appellees.

Before TATE, FRUGE and SAVOY, Judges.

TATE, Judge.

The claimant appeals from a district court judgment affirming the denial of unemployment benefits by the Board of Review of the Division of Employment Security.The claimant seeks judicial review of such denial under LSA-R.S. 23:1634, which pertinently provides that 'the findings of the board of review as to the facts, if supported by sufficient evidence and in the absence of fraud, shall be conclusive, and the jurisdiction of the court shall be confined to questions of law.'The appellees are the state agency and the claimant's former employer.

After interlocutory proceedings about which further comment will be made, the agency's board of review found that the employee had been 'discharged for making derogatory remarks about the company to a supervisor when he found out that he had been docked for not reporting to work' on a day which the company had previously agreed to consider as part of his annual paid vacation.The board found that therefore the employee had been discharged for 'misconduct connected with his employment', which is a cause of disqualification for unemployment benefits.LSA-R.S. 23:1601(2).

We may at the outset state that a single hotheaded incident cannot be considered the type of premeditated and seriously improper conduct which constitutes, within the meaning of the statute, the serious cause sufficient to deny unemployment compensation benefits to an employee.An employer has, of course, the legal right to discharge an employee without cause or for any cause; but such employee ordinarily is upon application entitled to unemployment compensation benefits when his terminated employment is covered by the Louisiana Unemployment Compensation Law.LSA-R.S. 23:1471 et seq.These benefits are not paid primarily to reward the employee or to punish the employer, but rather to protect the stability of the state of the family.

As the Louisiana legislature declared in enacting this beneficial statute, 'As a guide to the interpretation and application of this Chapter, the public policy of this state is declared to be as follows: Economic insecurity due to unemployment is a serious menace to health, morals and welfare of the people of this state.Unemployment is therefore a subject of general interest and concern which requires appropriate action by the Legislature to prevent its spread and to lighten its burden which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker and his family.The achievement of social security requires protection against this greatest hazard of our economic life.'LSA-R.S. 23:1471.

In Sewell v. Sharp, La.App. 2 Cir., 102 So.2d 259, our brothers of the Second Circuit, reversing an agency determination that an employee could not receive unemployment compensation benefits because of alleged 'misconduct', stated, 102 So.2d 261--262:

"Misconduct' is a wood of general usage and is not defined in the statute itself.Resort must, therefore, be made to the generally accepted definitions, such as wrongful, improper or unlawful conduct, motivated by premeditated, obstinate, or intentional purpose.Misconduct, within the meaning of the Unemployment Compensation Act, excluding from its benefits an employee discharged for misconduct, must be an act of wanton or willful disregard of the employer's interests, a deliberate violation of the employer's rules, and a disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has a right to expect of his employees.* * * We do not think that the term 'misconduct' as used in the Unemployment Compensation Statute, excepting employees discharged for misconduct from the benefits of the statute, should be so literally construed as to effect a forfeiture of such benefits by an employee except in clear instances.The term should be construed in a manner least favorable to working a forfeiture so as to minimize...