CASE PROCESSING PROCEDURES; COMPLAINT – Amendments

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The ALJ erroneously denied the County’s motion to amend complaint to allege that Union violated bargaining ground rules, which County brought prior to resting its case-in-chief. (See, e.g., Contra Costa Community College District (2019) PERB Decision No. 2669, p. 9 [Even though charging party had rested his case, under PERB’s liberal amendment rules the ALJ should have allowed him to amend the complaint and reopen his case-in-chief, while granting an appropriate continuance if needed to prevent undue prejudice to the responding party].) The Board noted two related principles: (i) The County had no need to amend its complaint, if it sought only to add violation of ground rules as an additional indicator of bad faith, because the complaint need not list all such indicia; and (ii) If the County sought to allege violation of ground rules as an independent violation, then the County could either amend the complaint or satisfy the unalleged violation doctrine. (City of Davis (2018) PERB Decision No. 2582-M, p. 13.) Thus, the County had the right to raise its additional allegation in each of three separate ways—as an indicia of bad faith that need not be spelled out in the complaint, as an amendment to the complaint to assert an independent violation (which the ALJ should have granted), and potentially also as an unalleged independent violation if the unalleged violation doctrine was satisfied.