PETITIONER WAS PROVIDED WITH THE WRONG MISBEHAVIOR REPORT THEREBY PREVENTING HIM FROM FORMULATING A DEFENSE AND QUESTIONS FOR THE WITNESSES; THE MISBEHAVIOR DETERMINATION WAS ANNULLED AND A NEW HEARING ORDERED (THIRD DEPT). ​

The Third Department, annulling the misbehavior determination and ordering a new hearing, determined the petitioner was not provided with the relevant “unusual behavior” report:

We agree with petitioner that he was denied relevant documentary evidence. The record reflects that petitioner received an unusual incident report from his employee assistant and, upon petitioner’s objection at the hearing that he did not receive the whole unusual incident report, the Hearing Officer provided petitioner with the to/from reports relevant to the incident at issue. At the conclusion of the hearing, however, and in response to the Hearing Officer’s statement of the evidence, petitioner objected that the unusual incident report that he had been given related to a March 2020 incident and not the one related to the June 2020 incident at issue. Based upon the objection raised by petitioner, as well as both the March 2020 and June 2020 unusual incident reports being included with the in camera exhibits, it appears that petitioner was, in fact, given an irrelevant unusual incident report. Inasmuch as the June 2020 unusual incident report is “relevant to formulating petitioner’s defense and effectuating his questioning” of witnesses, the determination must be annulled … . Matter of Saunders v Annucci .2022 NY Slip Op 04772, Third Dept 7-28-22

Practice Point: The failure to provide the petitioner with the correct misbehavior report prevented the petitioner from formulating a defense and relevant questions for the witnesses. The misbehavior determination was annulled and a new hearing ordered.