Tuxis Ohr's Fuel, Inc. v. Adm'r, Unemployment Comp. Act

• Citation: 309 Conn. 412,72 A.3d 13
• Decision Date: 30 July 2013
• Docket Number: No. 18791.,18791.
• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut
• Parties: TUXIS OHR'S FUEL, INC. v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT, et al.

309 Conn. 412

72 A.3d 13

TUXIS OHR'S FUEL, INC.

v.ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT, et al.

No. 18791.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Jan. 10, 2013.

Decided July 30, 2013.

Vincent T. McManus, Jr., Wallingford, for the appellant (plaintiff).

Krista Dotson O'Brien, assistant attorney general, with whom, on the brief, were George Jepsen, attorney general, and Philip M. Schulz, assistant attorney general, for the appellee (named defendant).

ROGERS, C.J., and NORCOTT, PALMER, ZARELLA, EVELEIGH and VERTEFEUILLE, Js.^*

ROGERS, C.J.

This case raises the question of whether the legislature, in enacting a particular provision of Connecticut's Unemployment Compensation Act (act),¹ intended to disqualify an individual from receiving benefits when he loses his commercial driver'slicense for driving under the influence of alcohol while off duty, and, as a consequence, is discharged from employment for which that license is required. The plaintiff employer, Tuxis Ohr's Fuel, Inc., appeals ² from the judgment of the Appellate Court affirming the trial court's dismissal of its appeal from the decision of the Board of Review of the Employment Security Appeals Division (board). The board had sustained an award of benefits to the plaintiff's employee by the defendant, the Administrator of the act,³ after rejecting the plaintiff's claim that General Statutes § 31–236(a)(14) barred that award. The plaintiff claims that the Appellate Court improperly held that § 31–236(a)(14), which disallows unemployment benefits to a discharged employee who “has been disqualified under state or federal law from performing the work for which [he] was hired as a result of a drug or alcohol testing program mandated by and conducted in accordance with such law,” did not apply to a commercial truck driver who, while off duty, loses his license for driving under the influence and, therefore, is unable to work. After a close examination of this provision and other laws relating to disqualification from unemployment benefit eligibility, we are constrained to disagree with the plaintiff and affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court. Connecticut's statutes and regulations governing unemployment compensation do not provide for disqualification in these circumstances, and, because unemployment compensation benefits are entirely a creature of statute, any change to the law in this regard must be effected by the legislature.

The relevant facts and procedural history are not in dispute. The Appellate Court's opinion recounts them as follows. “On December 18, 2007, pursuant to General Statutes § 31–249b, the plaintiff ... filed a timely appeal to the Superior Court to challenge a decision of the [board] finding that a former employee of the plaintiff was entitled to unemployment benefits. The employee, who worked as a driver for the plaintiff, had his commercial driver's license suspended as a result of his arrest for driving, on his own time, while intoxicated. Agreeing with the board's construction of the relevant statutes, the court dismissed the appeal.” Tuxis Ohr's Fuel, Inc. v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, 127 Conn.App. 739, 741, 16 A.3d 777 (2011).

The employee “had been employed by the plaintiff as a fuel oil delivery truck driver since October 12, 2004. State law requires a person driving that type of vehicle to have a commercial driver's license. General Statutes § 14–44a.⁴ On July 20, 2007, the employee informed the plaintiff that the department of motor vehicles had suspended his commercial driver's license for one year, effective July 21, 2007, because he had been arrested after an automobile accident that had occurred when he was driving his own car during nonworking hours. He had registered a blood alcohol level of .216 percent on a Breathalyzer test. State law provides that the holder of a commercial driver's license will lose his or her license for one year if a blood alcohol test shows a blood alcohol level in excess of .04 percent, when driving a commercial vehicle, or .08 percent when drivingany other motor vehicle. General Statutes § 14–44k (c).⁵ Although the employee's misconduct did not occur in the course of his employment, the plaintiff discharged him because he could no longer perform the work that he had been hired to do.

“The plaintiff argued at trial, as it had argued unsuccessfully in the underlying administrative proceedings, that in light of the fact that the employee had lost his state commercial driver's license as a result of his own misbehavior, he was ineligible for unemployment benefits. According to the plaintiff, the employee's ineligibility is established by § 31–236(a)(14), because, as the plaintiff construes that provision, the employee had disqualified himself from performing the work for which he had been hired by failing a state alcohol testing program, as manifested by his state mandated license suspension.

“The trial court rejected the plaintiff's argument. It noted that the [board], relying on § 31–236(a)(2)(B), had a well established policy of confining disqualification for unemployment benefits to cases of wilful misconduct in the course of employment. In this case, the employee's misconduct, although concededly wilful, had not occurred in the course of his employment. The court furthermore agreed with the [board's] construction of § 31–236(a)(14) to require an employer to establish that its employee ‘test[ed] positive for alcohol as part of a testing program conducted by [ his employer ], the plaintiff.’ ⁶ (Emphasis in original; footnotes omitted.) Accordingly, the court dismissed the plaintiff's appeal.” Tuxis Ohr's Fuel, Inc. v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, supra, 127 Conn.App. at 741–43, 16 A.3d 777.

The plaintiff then appealed from the judgment of dismissal to the Appellate Court, arguing that the trial court had construed § 31–236(a)(14) improperly to require “that an employee be disqualified due to the use of drugs or alcohol as documented by an employer testing program.” Id. at 743, 16 A.3d 777. Examining the plain language of § 31–236(a)(14), the Appellate Court first agreed that the statute did not necessarily contemplate a program established by an employer. Id. The Appellate Court ultimately concluded, however, that the other statutory provisions pursuant to which the employee was tested for alcohol by the police and subsequently lost his license, thereby rendering him unable to perform his job for the plaintiff, did not constitute a “state law program ” within the meaning of § 31–236(a)(14).⁷ (Emphasis in original.) Id. at 746, 16 A.3d 777. The Appellate Court therefore affirmed the trial court's judgment. This appeal followed.

The plaintiff claims that General Statutes §§ 14–227a,⁸14–227b⁹ and 14–44k¹⁰together constitute a “statutory program developed by the state of Connecticut to deal with drunk drivers” and, further, that that program is the legally mandated “drug or alcohol testing program” contemplated by § 31–236(a)(14). The plaintiff, citing Merriam–Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, notes the ordinary meaning of the word “ ‘program’ ” as “ ‘a plan or system under which action may be taken toward a goal,’ ” and argues that the cited statutory provisions, which govern drunk driving offenses and license suspension, clearly fall within that meaning. According to the plaintiff, the goal of the cited statutes is to remove dangerous intoxicated drivers from the state's highways so as to increase public safety. Moreover, the plaintiff contends, the statutes provide a system for doing so and specifically provide for severe penalties. The plaintiff identifies § 14–227b as “defin[ing] the testing program” pursuant to which its employee was tested and, as a result, lost his commercial driver's license by operation of § 14–44k (b). In the plaintiff's view, “[t]here is no other program ‘mandated and conducted in accordance with state law’ [to] which the legislature could have been referring” when it enacted § 31–236(a)(14), and the statute “cannot be talking about an employer testing program for the simple reason that [an] employer testing program cannot suspend and revoke [an] employee's driver's license.”

The defendant, in response, contends that the term “program,” as used in § 31–236(a)(14), is ambiguous, and that extratextual evidence indicates that the legislature, when passing this provision, was referring specifically to employment based drug and alcohol testing programs that are required by state or federal law for certain categories of employees in high risk jobs, and not to discretionary, police administered testing resulting from off-duty motor vehicle incidents. The defendant cites to previous board decisions applying the provision in the described circumstances, and utilizinga test that makes clear that an employer testing program is what the statute contemplates. Moreover, according to the defendant, the correctness of this interpretation is clear when § 31–236(a)(14) is considered in the context of the act as a whole. We agree with the defendant.

We begin with the standards applicable to a court's review of decisions of the board. “To the extent that an administrative appeal, pursuant to General Statutes § 31–249b, concerns findings of fact, a court is limited to a review of the record certified and filed by the board of review. The court must not retry facts nor hear evidence.... If, however, the issue is one of law, the court has the broader responsibility of determining whether the administrative action resulted from an incorrect application of the law to the facts found or could not reasonably or logically have followed from such facts. Although the court may not substitute its own conclusions for those of the administrative board, it retains the ultimate obligation to determine whether the administrative action was unreasonable, arbitrary, illegal or an abuse of discretion.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.)...