The opinion
MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions
Decision: 2016 ME 124
Docket: Yor-15-432
Submitted
On Briefs: May 26, 2016
Decided: August 9, 2016
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.
SANDRA BASTILLE
v.
MAINE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT SYSTEM
PER CURIAM
[¶1] Sandra Bastille appeals from a judgment entered in the Superior
Court (York County, O’Neil, J.) dismissing as untimely filed her petition for
review of a decision of the Board of Trustees of the Maine Public Employees
Retirement System affirming an administrative determination that Bastille
was ineligible for disability retirement benefits, and from the court’s
subsequent denial of her motion for reconsideration. Discerning no error, we
affirm the court’s final judgment.
[¶2] The Board sent its January 23, 2014, decision1 via certified mail to
legal counsel who had represented Bastille during oral argument before the
1 Although Bastille filed a motion for reconsideration with the Board, the applicable agency
rules do not authorize such a motion, and therefore the January 23, 2014, decision of the Board was
final. See 12 C.M.R. 94 411 702-1 to -7 (2014) (incorporating adopted rule number 2013-296,
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Board. The decision was mailed to the address counsel had provided—a post
office box in Winthrop. The mail was returned as unclaimed after three
delivery attempts made on January 25, February 5, and February 11, 2014,
and was then successfully faxed on February 26, 2014, and also delivered by
certified mail to counsel’s physical address on March 7, 2014.
[¶3] Twenty days later, Bastille filed an incomplete petition for review
of final agency action in the Superior Court. The clerk of court sent a notice of
incomplete filing to counsel’s office on April 1, 2014, stating that the petition
had not been docketed and that the filing deadline had not changed. See M.R.
Civ. P. 5(f). The complete petition was not filed until April 15, 2014.
[¶4] Bastille’s petition was required to be filed within thirty days after
she received notice of the decision, see 5 M.R.S. §§ 11002(3), 17451(2) (2015);
M.R. Civ. P. 80C(b). Assuming, without deciding, that the thirty days began to
run, at the latest, on March 7, 2014, when her counsel received the decision by
certified mail at his office, the complete petition was required to be filed on or
before April 7. See M.R. Civ. P. 6(a). She did not file a complete petition until
April 15, 2014—thirty-nine days after her attorney received notice of the
decision by certified mail and eighty days after the first attempted delivery of
which eliminated the authorization of motions for reconsideration of Board decisions effective
December 10, 2013, as summarized in the Weekly Notices of State Rule-Making published by the
Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions on December 11, 2013).
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the certified mail to the address provided by counsel. The court did not err in
dismissing the petition as untimely filed or in denying the motion for
reconsideration. See M.R. Civ. P. 7(b)(5), 59(e).
The entry is:
Judgment affirmed.
On the briefs:
Brian D. Condon, Esq., Law Office of Brian D. Condon,
Winthrop, for appellant Sandra Bastille
Janet T. Mills, Attorney General, and Christopher L. Mann,
Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for
appellee Maine Public Employees Retirement System
York County Superior Court docket number AP-14-13
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY