Here, a Education Law Section 3020-a terminated a teacher for excessive absences and because she submitted fraudulent doctor notes. Significantly, if the teacher used her accumulated leave, she would not have needed to submit doctors notes. Evidence was also submitted that the teacher had a anxiety disorder.
The court held the fact that the teacher may have been entitled to this leave anyway may ameliorate that fraud and denied the DOE's motion to dismiss the petition, reasoning:
The Hearing Officer nowhere concludes that, if excessive absences were removed from his analysis,petitioner's dishonesty alone would warrant termination of his employment. As petitioner urges, the very fact that he did not need the physician's notes to obtain paid leave, as the complete record will disclose accumulated vacation leave to cover all the days for which he used the notes, shows that a disorder affected his judgment, negates any dishonest derivation of compensation, and otherwise ameliorates his dishonesty. Therefore the penalty imposed, if no longer based on the excessive absences, may be disproportionate.
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