A unanimous N.C. Appeals Court panel has ruled that a State Highway Patrol trooper should not have been fired for lying about losing his hat.
In a decade-old dispute that already has taken one trip to the N.C. Supreme Court, the latest ruling calls on the Office of Administrative Hearings to come up with a punishment for the hat-linked lie that falls short of dismissal.
The opening of Judge Donna Stroud’s opinion signals the unusual nature of the case.
It is unlikely so many lawyers have ever before written so many pages because of a lost hat. True, hats have caused serious problems in prior cases. Once a street car passenger was blinded in one eye by a hat thrown by a man quarreling with others. Lost and misplaced hats have been important bits of evidence in quite a few murder and other felony cases. People have suffered serious injuries trying to catch a hat. As in those cases, the real issue here is far more serious than an errant hat, but that is where it started. Up to this point, this case includes over 1,000 pages of evidence, testimony, briefs, and rulings from courts, from the agency level to the Supreme Court and back to this Court for a second time. But we agree with Respondent, this matter is not just about a hat. It is about the tension between the statutorily protected rights of a law enforcement officer and proper discipline to protect the integrity and reliability of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.
