Land v. CUIAB, 2020 WL 5200858 (Cal. Ct. App. 2020)

Justin Land’s employer terminated his employment as a field service specialist based upon his “violation of company policy,” involving his failure to finish a job or return the next day to finish it because he “just forgot”; Land also gave out his personal phone number to another customer before returning to that customer’s home while off duty with his children to complete the job, and he failed to notify his employer that the customer called him complaining about missing items she suspected his children had taken from the customer’s home. After the administrative law judge (ALJ) issued an opinion upholding the Employment Development Department’s denial of unemployment benefits to Land, he submitted a declaration to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board (CUIAB) seeking to correct a “factual mistake” in the record involving the chronology of events. Notwithstanding the new evidence, the CUIAB adopted the ALJ’s decision, and the trial court denied Land’s petition for writ of administrative mandamus to compel the CUIAB to set aside the denial of benefits. In this opinion, the Court of Appeal ordered the CUIAB or the ALJ to consider the additional evidence submitted by Land and to reconsider its decision denying him unemployment benefits based upon “the need for accuracy as to the chronology of the events.”

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