In Garcia v. State Department of Developmental Services et al., ordered published February 21, 2023, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed judgment in favor of the defendant department. In May 2018, the plaintiff police sergeant was suspected to have manipulated overtime rules by reassigning officers from critical positions to cover positions his superior had instructed him not to assign officers to cover, and then assigning himself to cover those officers' critical positions. An investigatory entity investigated the allegations. The investigation took place between June 2018 and February 2019. During the investigation, the entity discovered that the sergeant had committed various acts of misconduct unrelated to the alleged overtime manipulation. In April 2019, the defendant department issued a notice of adverse action stating the plaintiff would be terminated effective May 2019. The notice was based on both the overtime allegations and other misconduct. After the plaintiff was terminated and appealed, the department withdrew its adverse action and retroactively reinstated the officer in September 2019. Three weeks later, still in September 2019, the department issued a second notice of adverse action to the plaintiff, demoting him from sergeant to officer effective October 2019. The adverse action was based on the overtime allegations and other misconduct. The officer filed an administrative appeal, arguing that under Government Code section 3304(d)(1), part of the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights, the adverse action was time-barred. Under section 3304(d)(1), a public agency cannot discipline an officer “for any act, omission, or other allegation of misconduct” unless the agency completes its investigation and notifies the officer of its proposed discipline “within one year of the public agency’s discovery by a person authorized to initiate an investigation of the allegation of an act, omission, or other misconduct.” An administrative hearing determined that the overtime misconduct allegations were time-barred, but that the allegations of misconduct unrelated to scheduling manipulations were also time-barred. It upheld the demotion. The plaintiff challenged the result by petition to the superior court for writ of mandate. The superior court upheld the department's decision.
The appellate court agreed. The plaintiff argued that the one-year statute of limitations under section 3304(d)(1) started running as to all alleged acts of misconduct in May 2018, when the alleged scheduling misconduct was discovered. The appellate court rejected that interpretation of the statute. Based on the statutory language and other case law interpreting the statute, the court concluded that the statute of limitation as to each act of alleged misconduct began running upon discovery of that misconduct--even if other misconduct had been discovered earlier, and even if the misconduct is discovered while investigating the earlier misconduct.
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