MAINE STRESSES COMP EVIDENCE:

The Maine Workers Compensation Board is not subject to the more strict rules of evidence governing other courts and should be open to evidence from a variety of sources so long as it is sufficiently reliable, the state Supreme Court reminded in a recent ruling involving a Scarborough police officer who sued over wrongful termination. In Michael Maietta v. Town of Scarborough the high court said a state workers’ compensation hearing officer erred when he excluded evidence from arbitrated proceedings under the police department’s collective bargaining agreement that found Maietta had not been wrongfully dismissed. The court vacated and remanded the case for a new hearing. Addressing the discipline of police officer Maietta for excessive absenteeism, a hearing officer found that “by and large the discipline was taken in good faith by the employer.” But the high court maintained that the decision of the labor arbitration panel, after a fully litigated arbitration proceeding, was obviously relevant to the question of the motivation for the discipline of Maietta. While it would decide whether the labor arbitration decision should control the workers’ compensation hearing officer’s decision, “it is certainly relevant to inform the critical decision that the hearing officer had to make regarding the motivation for the termination decision,” the court wrote.

Topics Workers' Compensation