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Failure to include transcript of the disciplinary hearing bars any ?meaningful appellate review?

Failure to include transcript of the disciplinary hearing bars any ?meaningful appellate review?

Matter of Michael Saunders v Rockland Bd. of Coop. Educ. Servs., 2009 NY Slip Op 04248, Decided on May 26, 2009, Appellate Division, Second Department

Michael Saunders was served with disciplinary charges pursuant to §3020 of the Education Law alleging that he allowed a student to be strapped into a restraining chair without cause and striking a student in the jaw and chest. Found guilty of these charges, the disciplinary, the arbitration panel terminated him from his teaching position.

Saunders appealed, seeking to overturn the penalty imposed by the panel.

The Appellate Division dismissed Saunders? appeal, commenting that it ?cannot conclude that the penalty of termination from [Saunders] teaching position was so disproportionate to the offenses as to be shocking to one's sense of fairness??

Noting that where arbitration is mandated by law such as Education Law §3020-a[5]), ?the arbitrators' determination is subject to ?closer judicial scrutiny?? if challenged pursuant to CPLR §7511(b) than it would receive had the arbitration been conducted voluntarily. The tests applied in cases of arbitration mandated by law:

The decision must be supported by evidence and cannot be arbitrary and capricious and "In addition, [CPLR] article 75 review questions whether the decision was rational or had a plausible basis."

Further, the Appellate Division said that in ?reviewing compulsory arbitrations in education proceedings such as this, the court should accept the arbitrators' credibility determinations, even where there is conflicting evidence and room for choice exists.

One of the elements in Saunders? appeal was the representation that ? the arbitration panel failed to properly consider evidence of his employer's lack of effort toward remediating his performance? (see Education Law § 3020-a[4]).?

Saunders, however, did not include the transcript of the hearing on which the panel's determination was based in his appeal. This, said the court, precluded a ?meaningful appellate review? of his claim and the court did not consider this aspect of his appeal.

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2009/2009_04248.htm

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).