Newman-Crosby Steel, Inc. v. Fascio

• Decision Date: 19 December 1980
• Docket Number: No. 77-368-M,NEWMAN-CROSBY,77-368-M
• Citation: 423 A.2d 1162
• Parties: STEEL, INC. v. Albert FASCIO et al. Walter KSEN v. Albert FASCIO et al. P., 77-369-M.P.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 1162

423 A.2d 1162

NEWMAN-CROSBY STEEL, INC. v. Albert FASCIO et al.

Walter KSEN v. Albert FASCIO et al.

No. 77-368-M.P., 77-369-M.P.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Dec. 19, 1980.

Hinckley, Allen, Salisbury & Parsons, Michael P. DeFanti, Providence, for Newman-Crosby Steel, Inc.

Roberts, Carroll, Feldstein & Tucker, Richard M. Pierce, Providence, for Walter Ksen.

Joseph R. DeCiantis, Legal Counsel, Bd. of Review, Dept. of Employment Security, Providence, for respondents.

OPINION

KELLEHER, Justice.

We have consolidated these two petitions for certiorari, one filed by the Department of Employment Security Board of Review (the board) and the other by Walter Ksen (Ksen), an employee of Newman-Crosby Steel, Inc. (Newman-Crosby or the company). Each petitioner asks that we review a Superior Court judgment that reversed the board's finding that Ksen and his fellow employees were entitled to unemployment-compensation benefits for a six-week period commencing on July 28, 1975.

In May of 1975, representatives of Newman-Crosby and Local # 3333, AFL-CIO, United Steel Workers of America (the union) ¹ entered into negotiations to reach a new collective-bargaining agreement that would replace the one that was to expire on May 31, 1975. Although these negotiations were unsuccessful, the union membership agreed to continue working under the terms of the expired contract while negotiations for a new contract continued. At the end of June, the company informed the union that the plant would be shut down from July 3 to July 28 for a three-week vacation period. This shutdown represented a departure from the company's long-standing policy of keeping the plant open year round and allowing vacations on a staggered basis. Newman-Crosby attributed the change to deteriorating economic conditions.

On July 1, 1975, the company proposed to the union a "final offer" of settlement which the union membership subsequently rejected. In making this proposal, Newman-Crosby's collective-bargaining representative stated that if the offer was rejected, the company would, as of July 28, terminate all medical and other fringe benefits currently being paid under the previous contract. This ultimatum was confirmed in a letter dated July 23, 1975. Consequently, when the plant "opened" on July 28, Ksen, president of Local # 3333, and sixty-seven other employees appeared at the Employment Security office to claim unemployment security benefits.

The Director of the Department of Employment Security determined that the employees who had applied for benefits were on strike and were therefore subject to the six-week-waiting-period provision of G.L. 1956 (1979 Reenactment) § 28-44-16, ² in addition to the one-week waiting proviso required by § 28-44-13. Various employees appealed this determination. The board treated Ksen's appeal as a "pilot case" and, pursuant to G.L. 1956 (1979 Reenactment) § 28-44-45, consolidated all of the appeals from the director's decision. Following a hearing, the board overturned this decision, concluding that

"(t)he final offer, dated July 1, 1975, proposed by the company provided for a three-week lay off without any vacation pay and also without certain fringe benefits under the old contract. The law is well established that when an employe(r) makes unreasonable demands upon his employees to return to work and it would be unreasonable for them to accept such a proposal, the resulting work stoppage is a lockout and not a strike. If indeed it is a lockout and the Board has determined that it is, then the claimants are entitled to the benefits claimed by them and no penalty should be imposed on them as it would be if they had caused a strike."

On September 24, 1976, Newman-Crosby filed a complaint in the Superior Court for Providence County, seeking review of the board's decision. The company also moved for a temporary stay pending a hearing, a request that was opposed by Ksen on the ground that Newman-Crosby was not an aggrieved party as set forth in G.L. 1956 (1977 Reenactment) § 42-35-15(a) of the Administrative Procedures Act. The stay was granted, Ksen moved to dismiss the company's appeal, and a hearing was held on the motion, which hearing led to its subsequent denial. Later, in a written decision, the trial justice reversed the board's decision, stating that "(t)here was no justification in fact or law for the Board to conclude that there was a lockout." He also concluded that even if the board was correct in its conclusion that the work stoppage was a lockout, the six-week waiting period specified in § 28-44-16 would still be applicable because a lockout is in fact an "industrial controversy" within the meaning of § 28-44-16. ³ Both Ksen and the board thereupon filed petitions for certiorari with this court, which petitions were consolidated.

Initially, we must address the question of whether the board has any legal standing to seek review under G.L. 1956 (1977 Reenactment) § 42-35-16 of a judicial reversal of one of its decisions. This section permits only a "party in interest, if aggrieved by a final judgment of the superior or district court," to petition the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. In order to satisfy this aggrievement requirement, the board must demonstrate that it has incurred an injury in fact. Matunuck Beach Hotel, Inc. v. Sheldon, R.I., 399 A.2d 489 (1979); Rhode Island Ophthalmological Society v. Cannon, 113 R.I. 16, 317 A.2d 124 (1974). Obviously, the board has not injured in fact when the Superior Court took a different view of Ksen's eligibility for unemployment benefits, and therefore we cannot find that the board itself was aggrieved when its decision was reversed.

We are not convinced that the board comes within either of the well-established exceptions to the general "aggrievement" standards described in Liguori v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., R.I., 384 A.2d 308 (1978), ⁴ for these exceptions apply only to an agency or a head of an agency that is invested with regulatory as opposed to quasi-judicial powers. Id. at n.4, 384 A.2d at 311 n.4; Hassell v. Zoning Board of Review, 108 R.I. 349, 275 A.2d 646 (1971). We have taken the position that an agency or individual that performs a solely quasi-judicial function has no responsibility for or interest in ensuring that a decision is upheld by an appellate court. Board of Police Comm'rs v. Reynolds, 86 R.I. 172, 133 A.2d 737 (1957); see Bowles v. Danin, 62 R.I. 36, 2 A.2d 892 (1938). In the case of Hassell v. Zoning Board of Review, for example, we determined that the Zoning Board of Review for the City of East Providence, which was not aggrieved in the personal sense, did not have standing to request a writ of certiorari from this court because

"the duties assigned to a zoning board are to hear and determine appeals from decisions of administrative officials charged with the enforcement of zoning legislation, and, in addition to pass on applications for special exceptions or variances. * * * These are its only responsibilities. It has no others for the limits on its authority have been circumscribed as well as proscribed by the Legislature. Neither directly nor by implication is the obligation to act as a representative of the public interest included within those limits." Id. at 352, 275 A.2d at 648.

In contrast, a governmental official, agency, commission, or board charged with the responsibility of administering a particular set of rules and regulations designed to promote the public safety and welfare acts for the people and, as such, must be permitted to represent the people when a matter of public interest is involved. See, for example, Matunuck Beach Hotel, Inc. v. Sheldon, R.I., 399 A.2d 489 (1979); Liguori v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., R.I., 384 A.2d 308 (1978); Altman v. School Committee 115 R.I. 399, 347 A.2d 37 (1975); Buffi v. Ferri, 106 R.I. 349, 259 A.2d 847 (1969); Tedford v. Reynolds, 87 R.I. 335, 141 A.2d 264 (1958); Board of Police Comm'rs v. Reynolds, 86 R.I. 172, 133 A.2d 737 (1957).

Within the Department of Employment Security (the department), the board performs a quasi-judicial function. This role has been defined by the Legislature through such statutes as G.L. 1956 (1979 Reenactment) §§ 28-43-14, 28-44-41, and 28-44-47, which give the board appellate review of certain decisions rendered by the director and the appeal tribunals. It is the director, however, who has been entrusted with the administration of the department's rules and regulations, and she is therefore considered to be the guardian of the public interest in the area of unemployment security. The Legislature has established this role for the director in G.L. 1956 (1979 Reenactment) § 28-42-31, which provides:

"It shall be the duty of the director to administer chapters 42 to 44 * * * and he shall have the power and authority to enforce all the reasonable rules and regulations which may be adopted as provided elsewhere in said chapters and all orders necessary or suitable to that end, and to employ any persons, make expenditures, require reports and take any other action, within his means and consistent with the provisions of said chapters, necessary or suitable to that end."

When we accept as given the board's quasi-judicial function and bear in mind our pronouncements in Hassell v. Liguori, we find that the board lacks the requisite standing that would justify our issuance of a writ of certiorari.

Newman-Crosby and Ksen have briefed a number of issues before us, but the dispositive issue in this case concerns Newman-Crosby's standing to appeal the board's decision to the Superior Court. In order for such standing to exist, the company was required to demonstrate that it was "aggrieved" within the meaning of § 42-35-15(a) by the board's exempting Ksen and his fellow employees from the six-week-waiting-period proviso to which we have previously alluded. To put this conclusion in its proper focus, we...