State v. State Employees' Review Bd.

• Decision Date: 06 December 1994
• Docket Number: No. 14999,14999
• Citation: 650 A.2d 158,231 Conn. 391
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut et al. v. STATE EMPLOYEES' REVIEW BOARD et al.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

Page 158

650 A.2d 158

231 Conn. 391

STATE of Connecticut et al. v. STATE EMPLOYEES' REVIEW BOARD et al.

No. 14999.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Sept. 29, 1994.

Decided Dec. 6, 1994.

Maria C. Rodriguez, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Laurie Adler, Asst. Atty. Gen., and, on the brief, Richard Blumenthal, Atty. Gen., and Charles A. Overend, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellants (plaintiffs).

David A. Zipfel, East Hartford, for appellee (defendant Daniel Cawley).

Before BORDEN, BERDON, NORCOTT, KATZ and PALMER, JJ.

BORDEN, Associate Justice.

The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the trial court properly determined that a decision of the defendant state employees' review board (review board) was not a final decision for the purposes of appeal under the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act (UAPA), General Statutes §§ 4-166 through 4-189. The plaintiffs, the state of Connecticut, the state department of public safety (public safety) and the state department of administrative services (administrative services), appeal ¹ from the judgment of the trial court, rendered after a hearing and submission of posthearing memoranda, sustaining the decision in part and modifying the review board order. Specifically, the trial court: (1) determined that the decision of the review board was not final; and (2) nonetheless, sustained the decision in part, and modified it by adding to it a provision for the review board to retain jurisdiction over the matter. The plaintiffs claim that the trial court: (1) improperly determined that the review board's decision was not final for the purposes of the UAPA; and (2) improperly modified the review board's decision to cause the review board to retain jurisdiction over the matter. We reverse the judgment of the trial court.

The factual findings of the review board as set forth in its decision and order, and the procedural history of this case, are not disputed for purposes of this appeal. The defendant Daniel Cawley ² was hired by public safety in May, 1986, as a data processing manager 3 (DPM 3). ³ At that time, he supervised approximately thirty employees as well as the activities of the data processing unit. Over the next several years, Cawley's supervisory responsibilities diminished until November 30, 1990, ⁴ when those responsibilities were completely terminated. Instead, public safety assigned him to special projects that he conducted independently. Public safety gave Cawley's supervisory responsibilities to a DPM 1, a position of lower rank and salary than a DPM 3. This shift in duties was intended to be, and was, permanent.

Early in 1990, a classification specialist from administrative services advised public safety to make changes in the data processing unit. Specifically, administrative services advised public safety to "red-circle" the DPM 3 position, ⁵ and to abolish or reclassify it to a non-managerial level once it had been vacated. Despite the administrative services directive, when Cawley was permanently reassigned to a nonsupervisory position in November, 1990, public safety did not review the classification of his position. Rather, Cawley remained a DPM 3. ⁶ Cawley continued to draw pay as a DPM 3 after his reassignment until public safety laid him off on May 31, 1991.

Cawley appealed to the review board pursuant to General Statutes § 5-202, ⁷ seeking a determination as to whether his layoff was in accordance with General Statutes § 5-241, ⁸ which requires layoffs by seniority within a position classification selected for layoff. The review board determined that because Cawley's position had not been reviewed pursuant to the administrative services recommendation, neither his proper position classification nor his relative seniority within that classification could be determined. Therefore, the review board concluded, the layoff was improper as "arbitrary or taken without reasonable cause." See General Statutes § 5-202(b). ⁹ Thereafter, the review board ordered public safety, with the assistance of administrative services, to "review the position classification of Daniel Cawley's [DPM 3] position, as of the time when he was assigned to new duties, November 30, 1990, and, based on such duties, determine the appropriate classification of his position." The review board's order also directed public safety, upon completion of the classification review, to follow its normal procedures in determining which positions should have been abolished and which employees occupying those positions should have been laid off. The review board ordered that if the result of the analysis indicated that Cawley was wrongfully laid off, he was to be reinstated and awarded appropriate back pay, seniority and other benefits. The review board made clear that it was not ordering the state to review the classification of all red-circled positions, but rather that its decision required review as follows: "if a position has been red-circled and if a permanent vacancy has occurred therein, and such position [has been] considered for layoff, the classification of such position must be reviewed and decided before a layoff decision affecting such position can be made." The review board did not retain jurisdiction over the dispute.

The plaintiffs appealed to the trial court pursuant to General Statutes §§ 5-202(l ) ¹⁰ and 4-183 ¹¹ claiming that they were aggrieved by the review board's decision and that the decision exceeded the review board's statutory authority. The trial court first determined that the review board decision was not a final decision within the meaning of § 4-183, and therefore was not appealable to the trial court because Cawley's right to reinstatement had not been finally determined by the review board. Having reached that conclusion, however, the trial court recognized that it was faced with a conundrum, namely, that: (1) lack of a final decision would "ordinarily" require dismissal of the appeal; but (2) if the appeal were dismissed, it was possible, depending upon the outcome of the future proceedings ordered by the review board, that public safety would be deprived of an opportunity to challenge the validity of the administrative regime mandated by the review board decision, which public safety claimed to be beyond the authority of the review board. ¹²

In order to resolve this conundrum, the trial court determined that the review board should have retained jurisdiction over Cawley's appeal "for the purpose of ultimately rendering a final decision after [public safety] had resolved the contingencies as directed by the order." How to implement that determination produced a second conundrum, however, because a determination that there had been no final decision necessarily would have required the trial court to dismiss the appeal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. ¹³ Nonetheless, the trial court rendered judgment sustaining the appeal in part, and ordering a modification of the review board decision, requiring the review board to retain jurisdiction over Cawley's appeal and to permit further appeal by any party. In the trial court's view, this order solved the conundrum because it gave public safety an avenue of further access to the review board and, thereby, to the trial court, for the purpose of later challenging the authority of the review board to order the position classification review process at issue in this case. The trial court also noted that its decision would enable the review board to monitor the compliance with its order by public safety and administrative services.

The trial court identified two sources of authority to support its ordering the review board to retain jurisdiction, despite the court's determination that there had been no final decision for purposes of appeal pursuant to § 4-183. The first source was § 4-183(k). ¹⁴ The trial court's reliance on this provision is misplaced, however, because the trial court's power to modify an agency's decision follows the court's decision to sustain the appeal, which can only be done if the trial court had subject matter jurisdiction over the appeal.

The second source was by analogy to the federal administrative law doctrine of primary jurisdiction. The trial court relied on United States v. Michigan National Corp., 419 U.S. 1, 6, 95 S.Ct. 10, 12, 42 L.Ed.2d 1 (1974), for the proposition that "[w]here suit is brought after the first administrative decision and stayed until remaining administrative proceedings have concluded, judicial resources are conserved and both parties fully protected." The difficulty with this source of authority, however, is that the federal doctrine of primary jurisdiction presupposes that both the federal court and the administrative agency have concurrent subject matter jurisdiction. See, e.g., Pan American World Airways v. United States, 371 U.S. 296, 83 S.Ct. 476, 9 L.Ed.2d 325 (1963). Thus, its use in this context would be inconsistent with our jurisprudence that a trial court has subject matter jurisdiction over an administrative appeal only if the administrative agency has rendered a final decision. Indeed, there are instances under federal administrative law, analogous to our law, in which the federal court must dismiss an action because an administrative agency has exclusive jurisdiction to consider the complaint. See, e.g., United States v. Michigan National Corp., supra, 419 U.S. at 5 n. 2, 95 S.Ct. at 12 n. 2.

Thus, the trial court's analysis, although a creative attempt to surmount the jurisdictional hurdles that it accurately perceived, itself engendered other insurmountable jurisdictional hurdles. Having determined, therefore, that the trial court's analysis cannot stand, we turn to the plaintiffs' claim that the trial court's initial conclusion, namely, that the review board decision was not final, was flawed.

The plaintiffs claim that the review board's decision is final because, under the UAPA, it is an agency determination in a...