The Court of Appeals of Valparaíso confirmed the ruling that accepted the lawsuit for unjustified dismissal filed by a basic education teacher against her former employer, the Instituto Hijas Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia.
In a unanimous ruling (case role 82-2024), the Third Chamber of the appeal court – made up of Minister Alejandro García, Minister Sara Covarrubias and judicial prosecutor Jacqueline Nash – ruled out error in the assessment of the evidence carried out in the court of first instance that accepted the teacher’s demand.
The resolution states that as the basis for the appeal, the plaintiff specifies that the educational facility hired the teacher in March 1983 as a Basic General Education teacher and that on December 14, 2022 she was notified of her dismissal as of February 28. of 2023 due to “(…) company needs, due to the rationalization of the distribution of the workload of the Physical Education branch that the teacher taught, hours that would be distributed among the current teachers in the area, in order to optimize the cost of the teaching hour, depending on compliance with the curricular planning.
“That the appealed ruling rejected the arguments given by the defendant, accepting the claim, due to which the aforementioned reason for nullity is deduced, given that in the plaintiff’s opinion the ruling has been issued in manifest violation of the rules on the appreciation of the proof, in accordance with the rules of sound criticism, contrary to the principles of logic and the maxim of experience (…)”, adds the resolution.
For the appeal court: “(…) having carefully examined the contested ruling, it can be seen that in its eighth basis, the sentencing judge on the merits gives the reasons why she reaches the conclusion by virtue of which the dismissal of the plaintiff is unjustified. , stating that after analyzing the dismissal letter through which the teacher was dismissed, it is not at all established that the available hours were actually adequate, as no evidence was provided to indicate what exactly the hours were, which “It was the need to adapt them and what relationship does this have with the issue of the values that the appellant has invoked.”
“On the contrary,” he elaborates, “from the evidence that was provided it was determined that the hours that the teacher performed at the school were not reduced, they even added two more hours of leadership, than the functions that she performed, the hours that she performed were not redistributed among the current teachers in the area, but on the contrary, a new teacher was hired, starting in 2023, who did not previously belong to the establishment, assigning her the hours of the separated teacher, without demonstrating that she was paid less, it being not possible to consider the facts that have been set out in the dismissal letter as established, the substrate of the dismissal seeming more like a way to separate the teacher based on her age, the appealed ruling having reached the indicated conclusion, based of an exhaustive analysis of the evidence provided, by virtue of the rules of sound criticism, which the confusing arbitrage deduced has not been able to distort, all of which will cause the appeal to be rejected insofar as it has attempted to maintain the opposite.
