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Arroyo v. Board of Education of Howard County6/10/2004
ted to it. The agency should be afforded the initial opportunity to exercise that discretion and to apply that expertise. Furthermore, to permit interruption for purposes of judicial intervention at various stages of the administrative process might well undermine the very efficiency which the Legislature intended to achieve in the first instance. Lastly, the courts might be called upon to decide issues which perhaps would never arise if the prescribed administrative remedies were followed."
The statutory frameworks from which these administrative remedies arise, however, do not always act as a complete bar to the pursuit of alternative judicial relief. In Zappone v. Liberty Life Insurance Co., 349 Md. 45, 706 A.2d 1060 (1998), this Court clarified the varying nature of administrative remedies where an aggrieved party has an alternative judicial remedy under another statute or under common law or equitable principles. We explained that the relationship between an administrative remedy provided by statute and a possible alternative judicial remedy will fall into one of three categories, which we described as follows:
"First, the administrative remedy may be exclusive, thus precluding any resort to an alternative remedy. Under this scenario, there simply is no alternative cause of action for matters covered by the statutory administrative remedy.
"Second, the administrative remedy may be primary but not exclusive. In this situation, a claimant must invoke and exhaust the administrative remedy, and seek judicial review of an adverse administrative decision, before a court can properly adjudicate the merits of the alternative judicial remedy.
"Third, the administrative remedy and the alternative judicial remedy may be fully concurrent, with neither remedy being primary, and the plaintiff at his or her option may pursue the judicial remedy without the necessity of invoking and exhausting the administrative remedy."
Zappone, 349 Md. at 60-61, 706 A.2d at 1067-68 (citations omitted) (some emphasis added).
We further explained in Zappone that, " hile sometimes the Legislature will set forth its intent as to whether an administrative remedy is to be exclusive, or primary, or simply a fully concurrent option, most often statutes fail to specify the category in which an administrative remedy falls," and emphasized that, "where neither the statutory language nor the legislative history disclose an intent that the administrative remedy is to be exclusive, and where there is an alternative judicial remedy under another statute or under common law or equitable principles, there is no presumption that the administrative remedy was intended to be exclusive." Id. at 62-63, 706 A.2d at 1068- 69. Instead, we stated that there exists a rebuttable presumption "that the administrative remedy is intended to be primary, and that a claimant cannot maintain the alternative judicial action without first exhausting the administrative remedy." Id. at 63, 706 A.2d at 1069 (emphasis added).
Petitioner relies on both Zappone and the Court of Special Appeals' decision in Intercom Systems Corp. v. Bell Atlantic of Maryland, Inc., 135 Md. App. 624, 763 A.2d 1196 (2000), to support his contention that the administrative remedies provided for by § 6-202 of the Education Article were primary and non-exclusive. We agree. Nothing in the language of § 6-202 explicitly evidences an intent by the legislature for a county board of education, or the State Board, to have exclusive, primary, or concurrent jurisdiction to hear complaints brought by aggrieved educational employees alleging wrongful termination.
The very nature of the administrative framework of
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