ADMINISTRATIVE LAW | HIRING/FIRING
01-2-5258 Hunt v. Borough of Wildwood Crest, App. Div. (per curiam) (18 pp.) Appellant borough appealed the final decision of the Civil Service Commission permitting respondent Thomas Hunt to withdraw his agency appeal challenging the borough’s disciplinary actions and his termination as a police sergeant in the borough. Hunt’s appeal included an allegation that he had been terminated in retaliation for his union activities. He had also filed a civil rights complaint in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in which he asserted retaliatory discharge. Noting that Hunt had sought to withdraw his appeal only a few days after issuance of Winters v. North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, 212 N.J. 67 (2012), which held that the commission’s final decision on a question of retaliatory discharge, advanced in a disciplinary appeal, estops a plaintiff from filing a complaint seeking damages on the same basis in court, that the withdrawal was due to Winters and not motivated by forum shopping or a desire to avoid an unfavorable result, and that only three of over 30 anticipated witnesses had testified and the matter was scheduled for another nine-hearing days, the panel concluded that the request to withdraw from agency review in favor of federal court consideration was made well before the proofs on any substantive issue were closed and did not foreclose Hunt’s later presentation of the claims arising from alleged retaliation in the district court. The commission’s action in accepting the withdrawal was not contrary to law, unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious or unsupported by the evidence.
