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Recent Court Opinions From NC COA and 4th Circuit

By Joseph S. Murray IV

Not a lot of fun cases over the past couple of months. Most of the cases presented here are about the North Carolina Human Resources Act (HRA) and turn on the minutia of the statutes and regulations. Here are the latest labor and employment cases:

Hunt v. N.C. Dep’t of Pub. Safety, No. COA17-1244 (N.C. Ct. App. June 19, 2018): This case is a reminder that state agencies can run afoul of the details of the HRA and the Administrative Procedures Act too. The genesis of this state employee grievance was whether, in the heat of an argument, Hunt said he quit to another employee, who was not his supervisor. The agency took the position that Hunt did quit, it did not have to consider any grievances on his resignation, and even if it did have to consider his grievance, his grievance was untimely.

The HRA requires an employee to provide his resignation to the “appointing authority.” In this case, that would be “the person or persons who have the power to make personnel decisions.” Since Hunt never told that person he resigned (there was contradictory evidence on whether he even said he quit), the agency’s refusal to allow Hunt to return to work was in effect a discharge. Since the agency discharged Hunt, it had to follow the HRA’s requirement to send Hunt a statement of rights of appeal and consider any appropriate grievance. Since the agency never sent the statement, Hunt’s deadline to appeal the decision was never triggered and his grievance was not barred for not being timely. The court upheld the ALJ’s ruling reinstating Hunt.

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