Sloan v. DEPT. OF HEALTH & HUMAN RES.
| Decision Date | 19 February 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 31374.,31374. |
| Citation | 600 S.E.2d 554,215 W.Va. 657 |
| Court | West Virginia Supreme Court |
| Parties | Rodney SLOAN, Appellant Below, Appellant, v. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN RESOURCES, Appellee Below, Appellee. |
Margaret L. Workman, Margaret Workman Law, L.C., Charleston, for the Appellant.
Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., Attorney General, B. Allen Campbell, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Charleston, for the Appellee.
This is an appeal by Mr. Rodney Sloan (hereinafter "Appellant" or "Mr. Sloan") from a June 26, 2002, order of the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, affirming a decision of the West Virginia Education and State Employees Grievance Board (hereinafter "Grievance Board") upholding Mr. Sloan's termination from employment with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (hereinafter "OCME"). Upon thorough review of the record, briefs, and arguments of counsel, we reverse the decision of the lower court and remand with directions to enter an order reinstating Mr. Sloan to his former position and to calculate the back pay award due to Mr. Sloan.
Mr. Sloan commenced his employment with the OCME in 1984 and was promoted to Chief Medico-legal Investigator in 1995. Mr. Sloan served under the leadership of Medical Examiner Dr. Irvin Sopher from his date of hire in 1984 through 1997. In 1997, Dr. James Kaplan replaced Dr. Sopher as West Virginia's Medical Examiner. The evidence produced at the hearings in this matter reveals that Mr. Sloan was given an excellent job rating by Dr. Kaplan as recently as March 1998.
By late 1998, however, the evidence produced at the hearings indicates that the professional relationship between Dr. Kaplan and Mr. Sloan began to deteriorate. At that time, Dr. Kaplan regularly utilized the services of Mr. Bill Gardner as a forensic consultant. Through various sources, Mr. Sloan was apprised that Mr. Gardner's qualifications and experience were questionable, and Mr. Sloan brought these concerns to Dr. Kaplan's attention. Dr. Kaplan was apparently displeased with Mr. Sloan's information and, according to Mr. Sloan, indicated that he would not entertain any such negative information concerning Mr. Gardner.1
In December 1998, Dr. Kaplan approached Mr. Sloan concerning the possibility of transferring some of Mr. Sloan's duties to another employee, Mr. Mike Kane, ostensibly on a temporary basis only. In January 1999, Mr. Sloan received a letter from Dr. Kaplan informing him that his title had been changed from Chief Investigator to Chief Investigator Recruitment and that Mr. Kane had been assigned the title of Chief Investigator Operations. Subsequent to this alteration, Mr. Sloan was also reassigned from day shift to night shift.
According to the OSME, sometime in early to mid-1999, Mr. Sloan discovered a bag at the OSME in a long term cooler which contained body parts, with a tag identifying the contents as the remains of decedent David W.2 Upon making this discovery, the OSME contends that the Appellant contacted Mr. James Lowry of the Charleston Mortuary to inform him that additional body parts, belonging to a body released to the Charleston Mortuary on July 30, 1998,3 had been discovered. The Appellant, however, failed to inform Dr. Kaplan that these additional remains had been located, and no further action regarding the remains was taken at that time.
On March 15, 2000, the bag allegedly containing some of the David W. remains was rediscovered in the long term cooler by a morgue technician. No formal investigation has been undertaken to determine if the remains were actually those of David W.4 When Mr. Sloan was confronted by Office Administrator Larry Kennedy regarding the discovered body parts, Mr. Kennedy testified that Mr. Sloan told him he had known about the remains for some period of time but had become busy and had forgotten about the remains.
On March 27, 2000, Mr. Sloan filed a grievance based upon reassignment of his job duties and alteration of his working schedule. On April 5, 2000, a notice of a hearing on Mr. Sloan's grievance was transmitted to the OSME. On April 6, 2000, the OSME dismissed Mr. Sloan from his employment, after fifteen years of service. Mr. Sloan thereafter filed a second grievance, contending that the discharge constituted retaliation for the filing of the prior grievance, age and political discrimination, disparate treatment, and a violation of civil service rules and regulations.
In July and August 2000, Mr. Sloan's two grievances were combined for hearings. Mr. Sloan's essential allegations were that the OSME offered no legitimate proof of an improper body release or improper body handling, no good cause for the termination, and inadequate reason for the alterations in job duties or working hours. Moreover, Mr. Sloan contended that the discharge constituted a reprisal for the filing of March 2000 grievance and that he was treated differently from other employees who were also at fault in the turmoil surrounding the David W. remains. He further argued that by responding to his alleged transgressions with outright termination, the OSME had punished him more severely than other individuals had been punished for misdeeds within the office.
The OSME countered Mr. Sloan's arguments by presenting testimony indicating that the primary justification for Mr. Sloan's discharge was his failure to inform his superiors that portions of a body released in July 1998 remained in a bag in the freezer of the office until March 15, 2000. The OSME also presented evidence indicating that a demotion letter was being drafted as early as January or February 2000 based upon concerns with Mr. Sloan's work habits, such as sleeping on the job and leaving the place of employment for short periods to obtain breakfast. Thus, the OSME contends that, upon learning of Mr. Sloan's failure to inform his superiors of the discovery of additional remains, termination was determined to be the proper resolution.
Subsequent to the presentation of evidence on July 7, 2002; July 18, 2002; August 15, 2002; and October 23, 2002, the Grievance Board denied Mr. Sloan's grievances by order dated January 30, 2003. The board held that the OSME had proven the existence of facts justifying the termination, that Mr. Sloan had been dismissed for good cause, that he was not treated in a disparate manner,5 and that he was not the victim of reprisal.6 The Appellant appealed that determination to the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, and the Grievance Board's conclusions were affirmed. It is from that ruling that Mr. Sloan currently appeals, maintaining that the decisions of the Grievance Board and lower court were contrary to law, clearly wrong, or arbitrary and capricious.
In syllabus point one of Cahill v. Mercer County Board of Education, 208 W.Va. 177, 539 S.E.2d 437 (2000), this Court explained as follows:
Grievance rulings involve a combination of both deferential and plenary review. Since a reviewing court is obligated to give deference to factual findings rendered by an administrative law judge, a circuit court is not permitted to substitute its judgment for that of the hearing examiner with regard to factual determinations. Credibility determinations made by an administrative law judge are similarly entitled to deference. Plenary review is conducted as to the conclusions of law and application of law to the facts, which are reviewed de novo.
Further, West Virginia Code § 29-6A-7 (1998) (Repl.Vol.2001) provides in pertinent part as follows:
In Martin v. Randolph County Board of Education, 195 W.Va. 297, 465 S.E.2d 399 (1995), this Court likewise elucidated the extent of this Court's scope of review, explaining as follows:
in reviewing an ALJ's decision that was affirmed by the circuit court, this Court accords deference to the findings of fact made below. This Court reviews decisions of the circuit under the same standard as that by which the circuit reviews the decision of the ALJ. We must uphold any of the ALJ's factual findings that are supported by substantial evidence, and we owe substantial deference to inferences drawn from these facts.... We review de novo the conclusions of law and application of law to the facts.
195 W.Va. at 304,465 S.E.2d at 406. This Court has invariably explained that as a reviewing tribunal, we "must determine whether the ALJ's findings were reasoned, i.e., whether he or she considered the relevant factors and explained the facts and policy concerns on which he or she relied, and whether those facts have some basis in the record." Id.,465 S.E.2d at 406.7
This case involves substantial factual discrepancy regarding the precise justification for Mr. Sloan's termination and the circumstances underlying that termination. In this Court's appellate review, as outlined above, we must accord substantial deference to the credibility determinations and factual findings of the Grievance Board. We must also, however, ascertain the degree to which the hearing examiner properly evaluated the competing concerns presented by the parties and the...
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