11 clean years, one lie, and an employer that forgot to follow its own rulebook
A Pennsylvania county fired a nurse for lying in a workplace investigation - then lost because it broke its own rules.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the decision on October 28, 2026. Even clear-cut dishonesty won’t save a termination built on a flawed process.
The worker had been a part-time registered nurse with the County of Berks for more than 11 years, earning $44.21 an hour on weekend shifts. Her record was spotless - not a single prior disciplinary action.
The trouble started in January 2025. The county began investigating one of her coworkers, suspecting him of stealing work time. A private investigator confirmed the coworker had left his shifts to visit the nurse’s home on four dates that month. She wasn’t scheduled to work on any of them.
The county called her in for two interviews - both on her days off - and asked whether the coworker had been at her home. She said no. When pressed again, she told interviewers her personal life was her own business and stopped answering.
She later admitted to a referee that the coworker had, in fact, been at her home on those dates.
On February 14, 2025, the county sent her a Loudermill letter - the formal notice a public employer must give before imposing discipline - stating she had violated its policy by providing false information during the interviews. She didn’t submit a written response by the deadline, and on February 20, 2025, the county terminated her employment for providing “false and misleading information.”
Her union filed grievances. By June 2025, a settlement agreement converted the termination to an unpaid suspension. Under the deal, the worker and her union conceded the county had “just cause” to terminate her, and in return the county agreed to reinstate her. As of the unemployment hearing, she still hadn’t gone back.
Here’s where it fell apart for the employer.
The county’s own policy required that an employee be “properly advised of his or her rights” before questioning. The court found no evidence that happened. A union representative sitting in the room didn’t satisfy it. The Loudermill letter - sent after the interviews - didn’t either. As the court noted, a post-violation letter telling someone they’d breached a policy “cannot constitute pre-violation notice.”
The policy also required the employer to weigh mitigating factors before jumping to termination for a first offence. The court ticked through the list: long service with no prior infractions of any kind, not the target of the investigation, off the clock on the dates in question, and the county already had the answers from its own private investigator.
For a first offence, the policy prescribed a suspension of one to 10 days - unless the violation was “serious in nature.” The county never explained why this one met that bar.
The county tried a fallback argument: the nurse’s dishonesty violated general standards of workplace behaviour, even if it didn’t breach the specific policy. The court wasn’t persuaded. Under Pennsylvania caselaw, dishonest statements to an employer only count as misconduct serious enough to deny benefits when they concern the employee’s own work. The nurse’s answers were about who visited her home on her days off. And nothing in the record indicated she even knew the coworker had left his shift to come see her.
That distinction was decisive. There’s a legal line between lying about your own job duties and declining to discuss what happens at your house on a day off.
The county also argued its discipline was ultimately proportionate because the settlement reduced the termination to a suspension. The court dismissed that too - a suspension stretching more than four months didn’t come close to the policy’s one-to-10-day range for first offences.
For HR teams, the case reads like a procedural checklist: follow your own progressive discipline policy to the letter, advise employees of their rights before investigative interviews, document why a first offence warrants more than the minimum sanction, and weigh mitigating factors on the record - not after the fact.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the Board of Review’s order granting unemployment benefits on October 28, 2026. The ruling is a final appellate decision.
