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Appeals court affirms previous decision
YOUNGSTOWN
The 7th District Court of Appeals has upheld the denial of unemployment compensation to a fired Youngstown State University payroll assistant, who also was a labor union president.
In a separate decision, also issued Friday, the appeals court upheld the jurisdiction of YSU police officers beyond the university campus.
The appeals court affirmed Judge R. Scott Krichbaum’s decision to uphold the state’s denial of unemployment compensation to Ivan Maldonado, a 20-year university employee and former president of the Association of Classified Employees at the university.
“YSU had just cause to terminate appellant, and accordingly, the denial of unemployment benefits is affirmed,” the three-judge panel ruled as it upheld the Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge’s decision.
The university said it fired Maldonado in July 2009 for threatening other university employees, using indecent language and for unsatisfactory performance of his duties.
In one case of an alleged threat, then-municipal Judge Robert Douglas acquitted Maldonado of a misdemeanor menacing charge.
In that matter, Maldonado allegedly told a female YSU employee that her circulating a letter of agreement with the university’s human resources director regarding another university employee would be “bad for her health.”
Judge Douglas ruled that, because there wasn’t a threat of physical harm, the alleged comment didn’t meet a necessary element of the criminal charge.
The alleged remark was made in the venue of union culture and the stress of union litigation, Judge Douglas ruled.
Maldonado, 44, of Euclid Boulevard, denied threatening anyone.
In June 2012, Maldonado was acquitted by visiting Judge Thomas J. Pokorny of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of two counts of falsification and one count each of grand theft, tampering with records, theft in office and theft, following a non-jury trial in the YSU payroll scandal case, in which two other defendants had earlier pleaded guilty.
After his acquittal, Maldonado vowed to fight for reinstatement to his university job.
In the other university-related case decided Friday, the appeals court upheld the April 25, 2011, arrest of Jonathan Littlejohn on misdemeanor marijuana possession, drug paraphernalia and falsification charges by YSU Police Officer Wilbert Drayton behind an Ohio Avenue apartment complex near the campus.
Drayton made the arrest after shining his cruiser’s spotlight into a parked car with five occupants, three of whom were smoking in the back seat, smelling burning marijuana and recovering marijuana cigarette butts from the car at about 1 a.m., according to the appeals court decision.
Acting on an appeal by the city prosecutor’s office, the appeals judges sent the matter back for further proceedings in Youngstown Municipal Court, where then-Judge Robert Douglas had granted Littlejohn’s request for dismissal of the case. Judge Douglas retired this summer.
The appeals court ruled that the officer acted properly under a mutual-aid agreement between the university and the city, which is authorized by state law and which gives university police city-wide authority.
“The trial court erred in dismissing the case based on the officer’s actions outside of the university’s borders, but within the mutual- aid agreement’s expanded territory,” the appeals panel ruled.
Both cases were unanimously decided by three-judge appeal panels.
Maldonado’s case was decided by Judge Cheryl L. Waite of the 7th District, and two visiting judges, Cynthia Rice and Mary Jane Trapp, both of the 11th District Court of Appeals.
The Littlejohn case was decided by Judge Joseph J. Vukovich of the 7th District, Judge Rice and Judge Frank D. Celebrezze Jr. of the 8th District Court of Appeals.