City of Richmond Heights Missouri Cases

The Professional Fire Fighters of Eastern Missouri, Local 2665, appealed the circuit court's judgment affirming the State Board of Mediation's dismissal of its petition. The Local sought to create a bargaining unit for fire captains, who were explicitly excluded from an existing Memorandum of Understanding, but the Board dismissed the petition based on the "contract bar rule." The appellate court reversed, holding that the Board's application of the contract bar rule was arbitrary and unreasonable because the petition sought a separate unit for excluded employees, not to add them to an existing one, while also affirming the trial court's classification of the case as a contested case.