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Hayber, McKenna & Dinsmore

Recent Rulings:
Unemployment Compensation

Home Helpful Resources Recent Employment Law Victories Recent Rulings: Unemployment Compensation

A Connecticut Superior Court judge recently upheld an award of benefits to an employee who voluntarily resigned his employment. The employee was a business development manager for a marine services company and earned $80,000 in base pay, which became $105,720 with overtime pay. The employer decided to eliminate overtime pay and the employee quit. The appeals referee determined that the decision to eliminate overtime pay from the employee’s compensation was a unilateral and substantial change in the employee’s employment that allowed him to resign voluntarily and still collect unemployment benefits.
Miller Marine Services, Inc., v. Administrator, J.D. of New Haven
Doc. No. cv10-5033417 (Aug. 24, 2011) (Wahla, J.). 

A judge in Connecticut recently affirmed the Department of Labor’s decision to award unemployment benefits to an employee who was terminated for “a combination of things,” and that the employer never followed up with the employee after it wrote her up for performance issues. The court held that this evidence was not enough to justify a finding that the employee had been discharged for “willful misconduct,” and that therefore, she was entitled to unemployment compensation.
Fast Signs v. Administrator, 2011 WL 2177252
(Conn. Super. May 18, 2011).

In a case handled by Hayber, McKenna & Dinsmore, the Board of Review recently ruled that an employee who was fired for engaging his employer in a heated discussion after his employer struck the client’s dog was entitled to unemployment. The employer argued that the employee had engaged in “willful misconduct” by continuing to argue with the employer about the presence of the dog in the business. Hayber, McKenna & Dinsmore succeeded in its appeal, arguing that the client’s behavior was a single, hot-headed incident that did not disqualify the receiving his unemployment benefits.