HARRISBURG - The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has issued an opinion affirming the Erie Unemployment Compensation Board of Review's decision to deny a woman benefits after she voluntarily left her job to relocate, noting that the woman had failed to show a compelling reason for quitting.
Judge Michael Wojcik wrote the order May 22. The case was also heard by judges Dan Pellegrini and Mary Hannah Leavitt.
Wojcik said in the ruling that the Unemployment Compensation Law “provides that an employee shall be ineligible for compensation for any week in which her unemployment is due to voluntarily leaving work without cause of a necessitous and compelling nature.”
Judge Michael Wojcik
| PA courts
The opinion said Lynne Bell worked for more than 20 years as an international student specialist for the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Bell and her husband owned a home in Philadelphia as well as a separate home in Philadelphia where her father, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, lived with his caretaker.
Bell stated that she discovered the caretaker was using drugs in the house and that the house was becoming “dilapidated and infested with mice." Bell and her husband decided to move with her father to Georgia, where her father owned a house. Bell said her father died in early September 2016, a few weeks after her husband relocated.
The court said Bell gave two-weeks' notice to her employer in October 2016, saying she was resigning to be with her spouse, who had obtained a job in Georgia, and to pursue her dream of opening a dinner theatre.
Erie unemployment compensation officials notified Bell in March 2017 that she was ineligible for benefits. Bell appealed that decision to the board 11 days after the appeal deadline passed, noting in her hearing that she was having difficulty receiving mail.
The board affirmed the denial, stating that “the decision by claimant and her husband to relocate to her father’s home in Georgia was a matter of personal choice,” because Bell had not provided any credible evidence that she had tried to find alternative care for her father in Philadelphia or a reason for relocating even after her father’s death.
Wojcik said Bell “offered no evidence that she explored any alternatives to relocating to Georgia and quitting her job. Further, after claimant’s father died, the need to care for him was no longer a reason to terminate her employment.”
The judge also said Bell “failed to establish necessitous and compelling cause to terminate her employment under the follow-the-spouse doctrine” and affirmed the board's order.