In Daniel Zaiter v. Boston Police Department, the Superior Court overturned a decision by the Civil Service Commission and held the Boston Police Department (BPD) had reasonable justification for bypassing Zaiter for a position as a Boston police officer based on two events that had occurred 20 years earlier, in 1995. The first was his arrest, along with four other Randolph High School students, for creating a disturbance and a subsequent charge of assault against a fellow student (a charge he initially plead guilty to but later changed to an admission of sufficient facts and the charge was dismissed), and the second was a fatal motor vehicle accident.
The Civil Service Commission had overturned the bypass because it felt that the background investigator had misled the interview panel concerning the scope of Zaiter’s involvement in the 1995 fight and motor vehicle accident by only providing limited synopses of each of these events. It concluded that by not considering all of the available facts and circumstances relevant to Zaiter’s ability to perform the job, BPD’s process for bypassing Zaiter had fallen short of the rules and requirements established under the basic merit principles of civil service law.
The Superior Court disagreed and reversed, finding that the BPD’s investigation of Zaiter’s application was “extensive, detailed and well researched,” and that the Commission’s decision improperly substituted its “judgment of a candidate’s respective strengths and weakness for the judgment of the Appointing Authority,” by “reweighing” Zaiter’s application. The Court ruled it “immaterial” whether the Commission or the Court would have arrived at the same conclusion as the Department. “Absent substantial evidence that BPD acted unreasonable, we are ‘bound to defer to the Department’s exercise of its judgment.'”
This decision is an important reminder that employers may have grounds to bypass candidates for offenses that occurred long ago, provided it does a reasonably thorough and independent review of the information.
