In most cases, a Wyoming employee who is fired is entitled to unemployment benefits. This remains true unless the termination was due to a form of misconduct.
Tommy Doggett worked for Strokers, Inc. repairing and servicing Harley Davidson motorcycles. In 2011, Doggett was instructed to repair a motorcycle that belonged to Strokers owner, Jeff Martin. When Martin returned home from an extended vacation he found that Doggett had not fixed the motorcycle. Doggett said that he had been unaware of the request to service the bike and immediately went to work on it.
In the middle of servicing the motorcycle, Doggett chipped a fin on the motor. He quickly repaired the fin but did not tell Martin about the damage or the repair. After five years of employment, Martin fired Doggett. Martin said that Doggett was terminated for customer complaints and additional costs to fix his errors. Doggett, however, claims Martin told him he was fired because he wanted to take the shop in a different direction and could no longer afford his services. Doggett filed for unemployment benefits and pursued his case via several different decision makers, including the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Doggett’s claim relied heavily on his employer’s knowledge of his poor work performance at the time of the termination. The Unemployment Insurance Commission found that Doggett’s admissions of chipping Martin’s motor and other incidents supported a denial of benefits. The commission also decided that Doggett’s intentional disregard justified his termination for misconduct. The Supreme Court, however, reversed the denial of unemployment benefits.
The Court held that a denial of benefits couldn’t be based on something that the employer didn’t know of at the time of the termination. In order to be denied benefits, the employee must have been terminated due to misconduct. This meant it would have had to have been documented. HR experts explain that Doggett couldn’t have been punished for chipping the fin of the motorcycle because Martin didn’t know about it when it happened. He found out long after the fact.
HR experts urge employers to take the time to document any customer complaints or misconduct in order to avoid a case like this.
