Opinion

State Tenure Commission v. Jackson

  • 881 So. 2d 450
  • 20 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 1128
  • 2003 Ala. LEXIS 349
Court
Supreme Court of Alabama
Filed
Nov 21, 2003
Status
Published
Author
Johnstone
On the bench
Brown, Harwood, Houston, Johnstone, Lyons, See, Stuart, Woodall
Cited by
1 cases

holding that where police officers initiated the encounter and at the outset solicited the defendant for prostitution, the defendant’s eventual quoting of a price did not constitute a solicitation by the defendant

How later courts described this case

  • holding that where police officers initiated the encounter and at the outset solicited the defendant for prostitution, the defendant’s eventual quoting of a price did not constitute a solicitation by the defendant

Written by the judges who cited it.

The opinion

JOHNSTONE, Justice

(dissenting).

I respectfully dissent. The employee does not argue only that § 16-22-14, Ala. Code 1975, required the documents to be placed in her “file.” Her cardinal argument is that the documents were, by definition, included within her “record” and therefore should have been provided to her contemporaneously and that the very purpose of the statute was frustrated by the admission of these documents to terminate her.

Section 16-22-14(a)(5) defines “personnel record.” This definition plainly and unambiguously includes the documents at issue. Section 16-22-14(e) equally plainly and unambiguously, indeed twice, requires that those documents which are placed in the employee’s “record” “shall be provided to the employee.”

The purpose of the statute is obviously to prevent the employer from secretly building a case for discipline against the employee over a period of weeks, months, or years. The benefit to the employee, obviously intended by the Legislature, is that contemporary notice of adverse documents being placed in the employee’s “record” would allow the employee contemporaneously to improve his or her conduct or to identify errors in the documents and to notify the employer of the errors in order to avoid disciplinary action against the employee.

This legislative intent is not fulfilled by the employer’s providing the documents only in response to the employee’s discovery request after the employer has already instituted disciplinary proceedings against the employee to be proved, as in the case before us, largely by those very documents. The admission of these only-belatedly-disclosed documents into the termination proceedings against this employee frustrated the legislative purpose of the statute. Thus, I respectfully submit that the Circuit Court was right in reversing the employee’s termination, the Court of Civil Appeals was wrong in reversing the Circuit Court, and today’s decision is wrong in affirming the Court of Civil Appeals.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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