327 A.2d 268 | Conn. Super. Ct. | 1974
This is an appeal pursuant to §
The board has appeared by the attorney general. The board's answer denies the allegations of the complaint. This court took no evidence from the parties but accepted the case for review on the record, after listening to oral argument from the parties. Local 1186, hereinafter called the plaintiff, submitted a brief; the board did not. The court assumes for the purpose of this decision that the plaintiff has exhausted all administrative remedies and is aggrieved by a final decision of an agency authorized by law to determine contested cases.
The petition was filed on April 9, 1973, pursuant to §
The sole issue presented to the board by this factual finding was whether or not traffic monitors are employees under the legislation giving the board jurisdiction to act. This legislation, §
The board concluded that the part-time employees covered by this petition were excluded from the benefits of the act and dismissed the petition.
At the hearing before the board, the plaintiff urged the board to follow the ruling it had set forth in Thompson Board of Education and Local 1303, Council No. 4, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, A.F.L.-C.I.O., Case No. 1900, Decision No. 925 (May 12, 1970). In that decision, the board sustained a certification petition of eleven employees, school-bus drivers, of whom eight worked less than twenty hours a week. The board was confronted with the issue whether these school-bus-driver employees, who worked less than twenty hours per week, were excluded under §
The statute which defines "employee," §
In this decision, the board has reconsidered its reasoning in the Thompson decision, supra, and determined that it was in error, since the language of §
"It is a rare case in which a court will reverse an administrative body because of its failure to apply the doctrine of stare decisis, or because in a particular case it has departed from the policy expressed in earlier cases." 2 Cooper, State Administrative Law, p. 532. In those cases where reversal is justified, the administrative decision must be palpably arbitrary, unreasonable or discriminatory. Ibid.
The practical construction placed upon an act in the course of administration is entitled to some consideration, and if it extends over many years it can become "high evidence of what the law is." Huntington
v. Birch,
The board's reconsideration of its Thompson decision, supra, when viewed in the light of these considerations, seems reasonable and discreet, and well founded in the record.
Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed.