Rado v. Board of Educ. of Borough of Naugatuck, 14057

• Decision Date: 04 December 1990
• Docket Number: No. 14057,14057
• Citation: 216 Conn. 541,583 A.2d 102
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: , 64 Ed. Law Rep. 834 William RADO, Jr. v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the BOROUGH OF NAUGATUCK.

Page 102

583 A.2d 102

216 Conn. 541, 64 Ed. Law Rep. 834

William RADO, Jr. v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the BOROUGH OF NAUGATUCK.

No. 14057.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Sept. 27, 1990.

Decided Dec. 4, 1990.

William J. Dolan, East Hartford, for appellant (plaintiff).

Thomas N. Sullivan, Hartford, for appellee (defendant).

Before PETERS, C.J., and SHEA, CALLAHAN, GLASS and BORDEN, JJ.

SHEA, Justice.

The plaintiff, William Rado, Jr., a tenured teacher, appealed, pursuant to General Statutes § 10-151(f), ¹ from the decision of the defendant board of education terminating his employment as a physical education teacher and director of athletics at the Naugatuck High School. The trial court affirmed the decision of the board and dismissed the appeal. The plaintiff has appealed from that judgment, claiming three grounds for reversal: (1) certain evidence of the plaintiff's misconduct was barred by General Statutes § 54-142a(a), ² concerning the erasure of criminal records, and was improperly relied upon by the court; (2) the remaining evidence of misconduct was insufficient to justify the discharge of a tenured teacher for cause pursuant to General Statutes § 10-151(d), ³ and (3) four members of the board were biased against the plaintiff and, as his motion for disqualification requested, should not have participated in the proceedings against him. We affirm the judgment.

In 1985, the plaintiff was suspended with pay from his positions as a physical education teacher and athletic director at the Naugatuck High School. This action followed his arrest on three counts of eavesdropping in violation of General Statutes § 53a-189, ⁴ a class D felony, which imposes criminal liability when a person "unlawfully engages in wiretapping or mechanical overhearing of a conversation." These charges were based upon allegations that the plaintiff had intercepted telephone calls involving other personnel employed at the high school.

The plaintiff was tried for the crimes of which he was accused and was acquitted. Following this disposition, the board on March 27, 1987, voted to consider terminating the plaintiff in accordance with the procedure set forth in § 10-151(d). After being notified of this decision, the plaintiff filed a request for "a statement in writing of the reasons therefor." In compliance with § 10-151(d), the board furnished such a statement, indicating that it was relying upon "moral misconduct" and "other due and sufficient cause," two of the reasons for termination of a tenured teacher specified by § 10-151(d). The statement based both of these grounds upon detailed factual allegations that the plaintiff had obtained a recording of a private telephone conversation of a teacher at the high school, had intercepted private telephone conversations at the high school and had disclosed the contents of these conversations to others. ⁵

Pursuant to the plaintiff's request for a hearing, an impartial panel was appointed, which conducted the hearing and filed a report of its findings and recommendations on August 16, 1988. The panel concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support a recommendation for termination of the plaintiff if certain evidence, which formed the basis for its contingent findings, could be relied upon. A majority of the panel, however, considered this evidence to be barred by the Erasure Act, § 54-142a et seq. Without such evidence, the panel unanimously decided that there was insufficient basis for termination of the plaintiff's employment. Accordingly, a majority ⁶ of the panel recommended his reinstatement.

Prior to the meeting of the board to act upon the report of the panel, the plaintiff filed a motion to disqualify four members of the board for bias or for a conflict of interests. On August 29, 1988, when the board met to consider the report, the plaintiff argued his motion, which was denied. At the meeting, by a vote of eight to one, in which the four challenged members participated, the board terminated the employment of the plaintiff. In a written decision issued afterward, the board, in contrast to the panel, concluded that the findings made by the panel based upon evidence not affected by its ruling concerning the Erasure Act were sufficient to prove the grounds for termination relied upon, "moral misconduct" and "other due and sufficient cause," as specified in § 10-151(d). The board also concluded that a second cause for termination upon the same grounds was independently supported by the contingent findings ⁷ of the panel relating to the evidence that the plaintiff had tampered with the school telephone system for the purpose of eavesdropping, which a majority of the panel had ruled should not be relied upon because of the Erasure Act.

In considering the plaintiff's appeal from the board's decision terminating his employment, the trial court held, with respect to the claim of disqualification, that the plaintiff had "not shown the existence of personal interests that could reasonably be interpreted as having an improper influence on the board members' duty to base their decisions on the factual findings certified by the panel." The court also declared that the board "could reasonably have concluded that spreading a teacher's personal conversation among other staff members was moral misconduct" and that playing a tape recording of a teacher's telephone conversation "in the presence of other teachers, particularly those in the same department, constituted other due and sufficient cause." The findings of the panel relating to this incident relied upon by the court did not involve any of the evidence that involved the applicability of the Erasure Act. The court concluded further that the Erasure Act did not preclude reliance upon the contingent findings of the panel relating to tampering with the telephone system and affirmed the board's view that these findings constituted an adequate independent basis for termination.

Because we agree with the trial court that the Erasure Act did not preclude the use of the evidence that the plaintiff had tampered with the telephone system at the high school for the purpose of listening to private conversations of other school personnel, we need not decide whether the board's decision to discharge the plaintiff would be adequately supported without such evidence. We conclude that the contingent findings of the panel, which are based upon that evidence, together with the findings made from the remaining evidence sufficiently establish the statutory grounds for termination relied upon by the board. Thus, we affirm the acceptance by both the board and the trial court of all the facts found by the panel, rejecting only the conclusion of the panel that the use of its contingent findings was barred by the Erasure Act. We also find sufficient support in the testimony before the trial court for its conclusion that none of the board members challenged were disqualified for bias or for a conflict of interests.

I

The evidence on which the panel's contingent findings were based consisted largely of the testimony of an inspector from the office of the chief state's attorney, Thomas Brady, who investigated the eavesdropping charges against the plaintiff, and of two telephone company employees who assisted Brady. The panel unanimously characterized this evidence as tending "to show that Mr. Rado deliberately created a system enabling him to overhear telephone conversations," but held that the remaining evidence would not alone support such a finding.

Before testifying, Brady had refreshed his recollection from a personal notebook in which he had recorded his observations and other information acquired during his investigation at the high school. The two employees of the telephone company testified concerning their observations of alterations made on the school telephone system since it had been installed, which rendered the privacy devices ineffective. These two witnesses had not examined Brady's notes or any police or prosecution records.

A majority of the panel concluded that the Erasure Act required exclusion or suppression of the testimony of Brady and the two telephone company employees as well as the physical evidence they had discovered, items of telephone equipment that had been altered. Nevertheless, recognizing that this ruling would be subject to review, the panel unanimously made contingent findings of fact indicating that the plaintiff had intentionally tampered with the telephone system for the purpose of overhearing conversations of others using the school telephones.

When a person is found not guilty of a criminal offense or the charge is dismissed, § 54-142a(a) of our Erasure Act requires that "all police and court records and records of any state's attorney pertaining to such charge shall be erased...." In State v. Morowitz, 200 Conn. 440, 450, 512 A.2d 175 (1986), we indicated our disinclination "to extend the strictures of § 54-142a beyond the classes of documents and individuals denominated therein" and held that the testimony of the victim of a crime, the prosecution of which had terminated in a dismissal and resulting erasure, was not barred in a subsequent criminal proceeding. We had previously ruled that the term "records" in the Erasure Act did not include photographs obtained by the police at the time of the arrest of a person when the prosecution had later been dismissed, thus triggering erasure. State v. West, 192 Conn. 488, 496-97, 472 A.2d 775 (1984). Similarly, we have refused to regard the phrase "court records" as encompassing prison records maintained by the department of correction, after a defendant had been pardoned and was thus entitled to erasure. Doe v. Manson, 183 Conn. 183, 188, 438 A.2d 859 (1981).

The panel recognized that the Erasure Act did not bar the testimony of school employees concerning their observations of events at the school. Because Brady and the two telephone company...