The Alaska Supreme Court heard oral arguments in four separate cases in Juneau court Tuesday, including one case alleging the wrongful firing of an Alaska Airlines employee that was dismissed by the lower courts.<\/p>\n
Attorney Fred Triem argued to the justices that his client Helen Lingley was superficially fired for stealing \u201cmiserable little earbuds with some passenger\u2019s ear wax on them\u201d that are handed out during a flight and often left behind.<\/p>\n
The real reason behind her firing was Lingley\u2019s age, her hourly wage that increased with seniority and her decision to report company misconduct that violated government rules to federal authorities, according to Triem\u2019s brief prepared for the justices.<\/p>\n
The lower court\u2019s decision was to dismiss the case because it was a federal issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Superior Court overlooked a basic principle of American jurisdiction and that is that state courts and federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction,\u201d Triem said, later adding that the common law concept went \u201cover the head\u201d of those in the lower courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plaintiff is the master of her case,\u201d Triem said, loosely quoting former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to explain his client elected to present her case according to state laws, not federal ones.<\/p>\n
Putting aside the common law argument, Triem said Alaska Airlines, represented by Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, could have had the case removed sooner to a federal court. It is now too late for that action, Triem said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLarge law firms representing corporate clients know that when a little guy sues the big company in state court, what\u2019s the first thing the defendant does? Remove it to federal court. Well, there was no removal here,\u201d Triem said.<\/p>\n
Attorney Gregory Fisher explained the airline\u2019s side of the case, telling them Lingley was given two opportunities to return to work but rejected both of them. He also told the justices that she was in breach of her contract when she reported her company before attempting to use the union guidelines in place.<\/p>\n
Triem said his client rejected both of the offers to return to work because they came with a required admittance of guilt to stealing ear buds. As for her deterrence from the union plan for issuing a complaint, Triem told the justices Lingley\u2019s union representative purposely misled her because he was employed by Alaska Airlines as well and \u201cthe union double crossed her.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his closing rebuttal, Triem told the justices to think about the justice of firing Lingley to save money when they catch a flight out of Juneau to Anchorage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go through the airport tonight you will probably encounter Helen Lingley\u2019s successor,\u201d Triem said. \u201cWhen she was discharged she was getting paid $22 bucks an hour and her replacement earned $11.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s highest court took the arguments under advisement. They also heard arguments in three other appeals Tuesday afternoon. One involved the right of a person running for public office to keep earnings private from the Alaska Public Offices Commission when client confidentiality is at stake. The other two arguments included liability in a car accident and a dispute between Silverbow Construction and the State of Alaska\u2019s Division of General Services.<\/p>\n
The Alaska Supreme Court hears oral arguments quarterly and prefers to hear arguments in the judicial district where the case was heard by the trial court, according to the court system\u2019s website. The justices receive written arguments for each of the cases and hear oral arguments only once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Alaska Supreme Court heard oral arguments in four separate cases in Juneau court Tuesday, including one case alleging the wrongful firing of an Alaska Airlines employee that was dismissed by the lower courts. Attorney Fred Triem argued to the justices that his client Helen Lingley was superficially fired for stealing \u201cmiserable little earbuds with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":14270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14269"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}