01-0-1468 Dunkley v. Costco Wholesale Corp., N.J. Super. App. Div. (per curiam) (16 pp) Petitioner part-time employee was injured at work and filed claims for workers compensation benefits for 2 separate incidents. The claims were consolidated for hearing and petitioner requested that the judge “calculate the rate of compensation upon a reconstructed” forty-hour week. Petitioner argued that she was entitled to a reconstruction of her part-time work week to a full-time work week under Katsoris. The judge denied the request because she was employed in a full-time capacity and made a higher hourly wage following the accidents that resulted in her injuries. Petitioner appealed and the court agreed that Katsoris was applicable and found that the trial judge erred in denying the motion for reconstruction of her work week. Contemporaneous full-time employment did not require rejection of a request for reconstruction of part-time employee’s work week. Reconstruction of a work week for a part-time employee was calculated by projecting petitioner’s actual part-time hourly wage rate at the time of the accident to a full-time work week.
01-2-1491 Messick v. Bd. of Review, N.J. Super. App. Div. (per curiam) (5 pp.) [Oct. 4, 2016] Claimant Dora Messick appealed from the decision of the Board of Review denying her unemployment compensation benefits, after the board determined that claimant left her job without good cause attributable to the work. Before the board, claimant testified that she had good cause to leave, alleging that she was harassed by supervisors who required her to perform tasks outside the scope of her job title, was refused medical benefits due to her age, and also disparaged because of her age. Claimant further contended that she left her position in order to have time during the day to seek alternative employment, which her schedule at her job did not accommodate. The appeals examiner ruled that claimant had not shown that her working conditions were severe enough to warrant leaving employment, since she waited several months after the alleged incidents of discrimination before resigning, and that claimant had failed to carry her burden of proof that she was denied health benefits due to age. The examiner further ruled that claimant’s decision to leave her job to have time to seek another position was a personal decision and not related to her prior employment. The court affirmed the board’s ruling that claimant left her employment without good cause, noting that good cause had long been defined as “a reason related directly to the individual’s employment, which was so compelling as to give the individual no choice but to leave…”. The court held that the board’s findings as to the lack of compelling reasons that forced claimant to leave her employment were supported by the record.
