Reier v. State Department of Assessments & Taxation

⁶ HARRELL, J. The controversy presented in this case bounced back and forth between the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH), the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, and the Court of Special Appeals over the past 10 years. The litigation began as an administrative appeal by David Reier from the State Department of Assessments and Taxation’s (SDAT) termination of him as an Assessor III in its Carroll County office. The SDAT ceded authority to the OAH to conduct evidentiary hearings and render final administrative decisions in such personnel matters. The initial Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the OAH assigned to adjudicate Reier’s appeal affirmed the validity of the termination upon a finding that Reier was given timely notice of his termination within 30 days of the SDAT’s “discovering the depth of [his] misconduct and performance failure,” pursuant to § ll-106(b) of the State Personnel and Pensions Article, Maryland Code (1993, 2004 RepLVol.). 1 The Circuit Court for Baltimore County, on Reier’s petition for judicial review of the ALJ’s decision, remanded the matter to the OAH.

The court instructed the ALJ to reconsider her decision in light of the Court of Special Appeals’s newly announced interpretation of § ll-106(b)’s 30 day notice requirement found in Western Correctional Institute v. Geiger, 130 Md.App. 562 , 747 A.2d 697 (2000) (Geiger I ). 2 Aggrieved by the Remand Decision rendered by a different ALJ, Reier again sought judicial review in the Circuit Court, which affirmed the ALJ’s decision. On appeal to the Court of Special Appeals (Reier I), that court remanded the ⁷ case to the OAH to apply the yet newer judicial gloss given the 30 day notice standard announced in this Court’s Western Correctional Institute v. Geiger, 371 Md. 125 , 807 A.2d 32 (2000) (Geiger II). 3 The same ALJ undertook this case for a third time and, after rendering factual findings varying as to some key dates from her previous findings, determined that more than 30 days passed between when the SDAT became aware of facts sufficient to prompt an investigation into Reier’s job performance and the termination. The ALJ thus ordered that Reier be reinstated and awarded back pay, consisting only of lost monetary wages. Both the SDAT and Reier turned again to the Circuit Court: the SDAT disputing the new factual finding that its managers in the Carroll County office were aware of Reier’s asserted poor performance for more than 30 days before Reier was terminated, and Reier arguing that it was error to exclude from the back pay award benefits and the other accoutrements of State employment.

The Circuit Court affirmed Reier’s reinstatement and directed that he be awarded benefits as part of his back pay. On appeal by the SDAT, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed Reier’s reinstatement, but concluded that back pay was limited to wages and did not include benefits. Dep’t of Taxation v. Reier, 167 Md.App. 559, 597 , 893 A.2d 1195, 1218 (2006) (Reier II). We are asked, at this point, on cross-petitions for certiorari, to resolve two questions.

We are called upon by the SDAT to decide whether the ALJ, in applying the Geiger II notice standard, erred in reformulating the factual findings concerning the point in time when the SD AT became sufficiently aware of Reier’s misconduct and poor performance to trigger the statutory investigation and disciplinary action period. We also consider, upon Reier’s petition, whether the phrase “full back pay”, as it is ⁸ used in Maryland Code (1993, 2004 Repl.Vol.), State Personnel and Pensions Article, § ll-110(d)(l)(iii), 4 encompasses other State-offered benefits such as medical, dental, and life insurance; leave; and retirement credit. I. FACTS David Reier, until his termination on 7 October 1996, was employed as an Assessor III for the SDAT office in Carroll County. As an assessor, Reier was expected to conduct assessments of real property “accounts”, or individual properties, assigned to him by his superiors, to establish their fair market value for taxation purposes.

A typical assessment would entail a preliminary review of building permits for each property, editing the computer database corresponding to each property (referred to as a Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (“CAMA”)), reviewing and noting comparable sales data, conducting an external physical inspection of each property, measuring new improvements, and speaking with the homeowner or appropriate adult occupant of a given property. This process is commonly referred to as an assessor’s “fieldwork”. The SDAT conducts assessments on a triennial cycle, completing assessments or re-assessments of one-third of the State’s taxable properties each year of the cycle. The SDAT generally strives to finish this task each year prior to 1 October in anticipation of the assessment notices being dispatched on 1 January of the following year.

Before the process is considered complete, however, local supervisors ⁹ typically carry out field audits of its assessors for quality control purposes. This auditing process generally does not commence for a given assessor until after the assessor reports that he or she has completed all of his or her field work for all assigned property accounts. The events leading up to Reier’s termination occurred during the final months of the 1996 assessment year. In early August 1996, the Assistant Supervisor of Assessments for Carroll County, Lumen Norris, 5 found a stack of 8 to 10 building permits on top of, or otherwise in close proximity to, a filing cabinet designated for the storage of such permits.

This caught Norris’s attention because assessors ordinarily commence their field work by locating and extracting from the cabinet permits linked to their assigned properties by account number so that the progress of any new construction may be evaluated properly. If permits were not in their proper place, filed in the cabinet, as was the case here, it may indicate that they were not being considered in the assessment process. Norris identified the misplaced permits by their account numbers as linked to properties assigned to Reier. Shortly after his discovery, Norris brought the misplaced permits to the attention of the Supervisor of Assessments for Carroll County, Larry White, during a discussion about quality control and the pending field audits.

White decided to use the permits as a sampling of Reier’s work for audit purposes. The timeline of the particular audit of Reier’s work, as one may imagine, is a source of considerable dispute in this record because of its significance to the determination of the date on which SDAT became aware of the extent of Reier’s asserted poor performance and misconduct. Because Reier was terminated on 7 October 1996, a finding that the SDAT was aware of Reier’s deficient work prior to 7 September 1996 would render the discipline untimely under the Geiger II standard ¹⁰ for calculating the 30 day period in which the State as an employer has to investigate and effectuate discipline. As noted earlier, there was a divergence of findings on this point between the first and second remand hearings at the OAH.

We shall explore these findings in greater detail infra. The remainder of the factual background is uncontested. On 13 September 1996, White met with the State Supervisor of the SDAT, Joseph Szabo, and Personnel Administrator, Emory Rudy, about Reier’s performance as an assessor. On 24 September 1996, Assessor Supervisor Gail Trawinski of the Carroll County office reported the findings of her review of Reier’s “edits” 6 of properties that recently had been sold. 7 Her initial review uncovered 21 errors in Reier’s editing of 68 properties. 8 Trawinski’s subsequent review of 300 other edits performed by Reier yielded a finding of 87 mistakes.

Trawinski communicated her findings to White in late September. Around that same time, the SDAT headquarters dispatched Assessor Manager, Joseph Wagner, to audit Reier’s work. Upon a drive-through of the geographical area containing the properties assigned to Reier, Wagner identified 24 properties exhibiting visible, new improvements that had been present for more than one month. Wagner determined that, of the 24, Reier’s fieldwork correctly noted improvements on one account, incorrectly noted five, and entirely missed improvements on 18 properties.

Satisfied that the audit established thoroughly the pervasiveness and unacceptable frequency of Reier’s assessment ¹¹ errors, 9 White convened a meeting with Reier on 3 October 1996 to discuss the audit’s findings and determine the appropriate sanction. White terminated Reier after weighing Reier’s previously satisfactory job performance evaluation against the recent audit results and Reier’s unsatisfactory explanation of the audit results.

II

PROCEDURAL HISTORY— A CLOSER EXAMINATION After 10 years of litigation, the procedural history of this case is admittedly protracted. We commence our close review of this history necessarily with the first remand to the OAH because it resulted in the pertinent factual findings later revised in the course of the second remand. OAH Remand Decision I (8 December 2000) As a result of the Court of Special Appeals’s decision in Geiger I, the Circuit Court for Baltimore County remanded Reier’s appeal to the OAH for more detailed findings of fact pertaining to the SDAT’s actions after the initial discovery of the out-of-place building permits. The court, quoting the standard from Geiger I, requested that the ALJ determine “the date by which SDAT ‘... in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should reasonably have acquired enough knowledge’ to justify terminating Reier on October 7, 1996.” Of specific interest to the court was how long it took Norris to investigate the misplaced permits and “discover the misconduct that they evidenced,” as well as whether the review of Reier’s work that transpired in “early September” occurred before 6 September 1996.

In response to the Circuit Court’s order, ALJ Sondra Spencer conducted a new hearing and accepted additional evidence from both parties, along with the record from the initial OAH hearing. The findings of fact in ALJ Spencer’s ¹² resultant decision, responsive to the Circuit Court order, were as follows: 3. In early August 1996, Lumen Norris, Assistant Supervisor of Assessments for Carroll County, found a stack of 8 to 10 building permits on a cabinet. There were no notations of [sic] the permits.

The properties reflected on the permits were assigned to the Employee. 4. Mr. Norris discussed the permits with Larry White, Supervisor of Assessments for Carroll County. Mr. Norris and Mr. White took the permits and went to the properties to determine if work had been performed pursuant to the permits. They discovered that the Employee had been to the properties but had not made any notations on the permits. 5.

On September 3, 1996, the Employee completed his fieldwork. 6. As part of a quality control review, once an assessor completes his fieldwork, Mr. White conducts a random audit of the assessor’s work. 7. On September 9, 1996, Mr. White conducted a field audit of the Employee’s completed fieldwork. The assessments for 68 properties were reviewed and 21 errors, which affected property valuations, were discovered. 8.

Between September 14 and September 30, at least three more audits of the Employee’s work were conducted. One of the audits revealed 87 out of a total of 300 properties with errors affecting evaluation. Another audit reviewed the fieldwork on 33 properties. Of the 24 properties with changes from previous assessments, the Employee accurately reflected one change, incorrectly noted five changes that he identified[,] and failed to reflect 18 changes, including decks and additional buildings on the properties.

Upon these findings of fact, the ALJ concluded that Reier had not made a prima facie showing that the SDAT was on notice of his misconduct to an extent that would justify ¹³ discipline more than 30 days prior to the actual termination. Even though Norris and White were aware of the misplaced permits and the errors evidenced by Reier’s failure to note the relevant real property improvements, ALJ Spencer found that such knowledge did not rise to the level needed to justify terminating Reier’s employment. 10 Further, because Reier had not completed his field work at that time, it was n ot yet incumbent upon Norris or White to conduct their audit of Reier’s work. The ALJ determined that the SDAT was put on notice of Reier’s misconduct, to an extent sufficient to trigger commencement of the time period prescribed in § 11-106(b), only after Norris and White’s 9 September 1996 audit of 68 of Reier’s assigned properties, thus making the 7 October 1996 termination timely. 11 Reier sought judicial review of the AL J’s decision in the Circuit Court. Circuit Court Review (31 December 2001) The Circuit Court judge affirmed the ALJ’s decision in favor of the SDAT under the deferential “substantial evidence” standard of review.

The court dismissed Reier’s argument that the discovery of the misplaced permits was sufficient to trigger the 30 day period under § 11—106(b). Commenting on Reier’s position, the court stated “[wjere the Court to adopt this approach, State agencies would have to launch a full scale investigation every time a supervisor discovered that an employee failed to put away documents used by the employee in performing his job.” Reier appealed this decision to the Court of Special Appeals. ¹⁴ Court of Special Appeals Remand (19 December 2002) The Court of Special Appeals, in an unreported opinion filed on 19 December 2002, weighed in on the 30 day notice provision of § ll-106(b), taking into account our opinion in Geiger II. The intermediate appellate court identified its task as deciding “[w]hen did the [SDAT] acquire knowledge sufficient to order an investigation of the conduct that ultimately resulted in the termination of [Reier].” The appellate court panel prefaced its review of the procedural history and facts of the case by noting that if the SDAT acquired adequate notice in early August 1996, as alleged by Reier, the termination would have to be rescinded. Obfuscating the court’s analysis of the question before it, however, was the fact that the chronology set forth [by the ALJ’s factual findings] suggests—but does not definitively establish—that prior to September 3, 1996, Messrs.

Norris and White went to the property [sic] mentioned on the mislaid permits and discovered that Reier had not noted the improvements on the permits even though he had claimed to have been on the premises.[ 12 ] If Norris or White actually had checked Reier’s field cards to determine if he had noted any of the improvements after Reier had claimed to have visited the properties, the panel hypothecated, then Reier’s supervisors would have possessed, at that point, sufficient knowledge to investigate Reier for derogation of his duties. Because this realization would have occurred before Reier reported that his field work was complete on 3 September 1996, the 7 October termination would have fallen outside of the statutorily prescribed 30 day period for the proper administration of the statutory investigative and disciplinary processes in this case. The Court of Special Appeals ultimately resolved that it could not so conclude ¹⁵ because neither the initial ALJ, M. Gayle Hafner, nor ALJ Spencer made an explicit determination of when Norris or White examined Reier’s field cards. Because of the ambiguous chronology established in the earlier administrative decisions, the appellate court panel noted that the facts as found, when alternatively viewed in a light most favorable to either party, would allow either party to prevail.

The court noted that it was possible to conclude that Norris and White, prior to 3 September 1996, were aware of Reier’s omission from the field cards of the improvements described in the misplaced building permits and that Jack Burgesen, another assessor in the Carroll County office, had audited one of Reier’s assigned properties, at White’s direction, on 4 September. Conversely, the record also supported a contrary conclusion that Norris and White only became aware of Reier’s deficient performance upon their field inspection of the building permit properties on 9 September 1996. The intermediate appellate court opined that the date that SDAT acquired knowledge sufficient to order an investigation into whether Reier had been properly performing his field work was when the employer discovered (1) that improvements (mentioned on the misplace[d] permits) had been performed and (2) that Reier had visited the premises but had failed to note on SDAT’s field cards that the improvements had been completed. The ambiguity of the ALJ’s fact findings, however, did not determine with certainty when the critical knowledge noted above was acquired by the SDAT.

Accordingly, the court remanded the case for a determination by the ALJ whether the SDAT acquired the critical knowledge prior to 7 September 1996, which, if so, would require rescission of Reier’s termination. OAH Remand Decision II (12 April 2001) Upon remand, ALJ Spencer reconsidered the evidence adduced thus far, declining the SDAT’s request to supplement the record further with additional testimony on the questions posed by the Court of Special Appeals. The ALJ recited her ¹⁶ previous findings of fact from the first remand decision, along with a critical revision of finding number four 13 : As a result of the remand order and further review of the record, I find the following additional facts: 11. Mr. Norris found a stack of misplaced permits in August 1996.

There were no notations of the permits that the property had been assessed or visited. Upon further checking, Mr. Norris concluded that the properties had been assigned to Reier. 12. After finding the field cards, Mr. Norris pulled the field cards to determine if Reier had been to the properties. The notation on the field cards indicated Reier had been to the properties. 13.

Mr. Norris discussed his findings with Mr. White. Both Mr. Norris and Mr. White then went to the properties identified in the permits. 14. Mr. White next instructed Jack Burgeson [sic], another assessor, to reassess the properties. 15. Mr. Burgeson [sic] conducted reassessments on September 4,1996, September 14,1996, and September 30, 1996.

(footnotes omitted). ALJ Spencer recast the chronology relying on the testimony taken during the 17 April 1997 hearing, rather than testimony received on 7 May at the initial OAH proceeding presided over by ALJ Hafner. She found that the April testimony was “more credible and accurately reflected] the chronology of events in this case,” 14 which now resolved that the SDAT ¹⁷ acquired knowledge sufficient to trigger an investigation of Reier’s job performance by 4 September 1996. The judge relied upon Norris’s 17 April testimony that, after finding the misplaced permits, he reviewed the corresponding field cards, which led him to discuss the matter with White.

The two then visited the properties to which the permits corresponded and discovered that Reier had not noted on the field cards the completed improvements located on the properties, despite his indication that he had visited the properties. This realization prompted White to order Burgesen to reassess those properties, which task Burgesen commenced on 4 September 1996, as evidenced by his notation of that date on one of the misplaced permits. ALJ Spencer further noted that Burgesen had to have possessed the field cards to conduct his reassessment of the properties, providing further evidence that the SDAT was cognizant of Reier’s poor performance prior to the critical date of 7 September 1996. Accordingly, the ALJ rescinded the termination as untimely.

ALJ Spencer then considered the question of whether State-offered benefits are contemplated as part of the “full back pay” remedy provided in § ll-110(d)(l) 15 for a rescinded termination. In her view, § 11-1 10(d)(1) was framed in the disjunctive, thus providing three mutually exclusive possible outcomes to an employee’s appeal of his or her termination: (1) affirmation of the discipline, (2) rescission or modification of the discipline and the restoration of pay and the full panoply of state benefits, or (3) reinstatement, full back pay, or both. The ALJ thus reasoned that the statute foreclosed the possibility of both reinstatement with full back pay and the award of benefits. Accordingly, Reier was reinstated with ¹⁸ full back pay, but not restored with lost state benefits.

Both Reier and the SDAT sought judicial review of the decision. Circuit Court Review (18 March 2005) The SDAT assigned error to the ALJ for not permitting the admission of additional evidence on the questions posed by the Court of Special Appeals in Reier I and to the ALJ’s revision of her previous findings of fact. Reier, on the other hand, argued that the ALJ incorrectly concluded that State-offered benefits may not accompany an award of full back pay. Finding that the ALJ properly made supplemental findings of fact in response to the Court of Special Appeals’s specific inquiries, the Circuit Court affirmed the administrative decision concluding Reier’s termination to be unlawful.

The court also concluded that it would defy logic to construe § 11— 110(d)(1) as precluding benefits as part of a full back pay award for a wrongful termination. The SDAT appealed this judgment. Court of Special Appeals ’s Review (3 March 2006) The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the reinstatement of Reier, finding that its previous unreported opinion in this case and Geiger II effectively vacated ALJ Spencer’s original findings of fact. Reier II, 167 Md.App. at 591 , 893 A.2d at 1215 .

The intermediate appellate court perceived that it was incumbent upon ALJ Spencer to make new factual findings to “answer specific questions that would undoubtedly go to the merits of what the Court of Appeals declared agencies and appellate courts should seek in reviewing matters under § 11— 106.” Id. The new factual determinations were not made in error because “new legal principles [were] to be applied to these facts.” Reier II, 167 Md.App. at 592 , 893 A.2d at 1215 . Because the resolution of the case under the Geiger I standard did not implicate as relevant facts pertaining to when the SDAT became aware of circumstances justifying an investigation of Reier, the resolution of the case under the Geiger II standard necessitated new findings of fact. Reier II, 167 Md.App. at 593-94 , 893 A.2d at 1216 .

It was within the ALJ’s ¹⁹ discretion whether to accept further evidence from the SDAT on the questions posed by the Court of Special Appeals’s remand opinion. Reier II, 167 Md.App. at 594-95 , 893 A.2d at 1216-17 . Finally, the appellate court panel reversed the Circuit Court on the issue of benefits, holding that the plain language of § 11—110(d)(1) precluded the award of benefits in addition to full back pay. The General Assembly drafted the statute to restore benefits in the event of the rescission or modification of a disciplinary action in subsubsubsection (ii), but not in conjunction with full back pay as provided in subsubsubsection (ni).

The intermediate appellate court reasoned that if the Legislature intended for benefits to be available in addition to full back pay, the statute would have been framed more clearly to so provide. Reier II, 167 Md.App. at 597 , 893 A.2d at 1218 .

III

DISCUSSION A. The Revised Factual Findings The SDAT renews here its assignment of error to ALJ Spencer’s decision for her revision of the timeline findings pertaining to its notice of Reier’s deficient performance as an assessor. Specifically, the SDAT argues initially that the law of the case doctrine forbade the ALJ from revising her previous findings of fact in this regard. The findings of fact made on the first remand to OAH supported ALJ Spencer’s conclusion at that time that the SDAT was not on adequate notice of Reier’s misconduct until 9 September 1996. This conclusion, as the SDAT’s theory goes, is readily applicable to either the Geiger I or Geiger II standard, without the need for revisiting the fact-finding function.

Thus, the ALJ overreached her authority in answering the Court o f Special Appeals’s questions of clarification in Reier I by reformulating the timeline of events which previously had been affirmed by the Circuit Court as supported by substantial evidence. Illustrative of this overreaching, the SDAT observes that if the revised findings were in place for the first remand decision ²⁰ applying the Geiger I standard, the ALJ would have had to come to a different conclusion than was reached in reliance on the findings of fact actually made in that decision. The SDAT asserts that Reier’s termination would have been justified, and the 30 day “clock” would have begun to run had the SDAT known prior to 4 September 1996 that Reier failed to note and record the improvements evident at the properties he claimed to have visited. Notably, ALJ Spencer did not arrive at that conclusion in her first remand decision, but instead found that the SDAT was not aware sufficiently of Reier’s possible misconduct, and thus the 30 day “clock” would not have begun to run, until 9 September 1996.

The SDAT argues that when the Court of Special Appeals in Reier I sustained the finding that Norris and White conducted the audit on 9 September, such became the law of the case and could not be revised at the subsequent administrative hearing on remand to the OAH. Reier counters that the ALJ merely was answering the questions posed by the Court of Special Appeals in Reier I because of the ambiguity noted by that court in her findings of fact in the 8 December 2000 remand decision. 16 Because it was not entirely clear when the SDAT became aware sufficiently of Reier’s misconduct, the Court of Special Appeals remanded the ease to the ALJ for clarification. Thus, the ALJ did not exceed her authority in making the findings, revised though they were. The “law of the case doctrine is one of appellate procedure.” Scott v. State, 379 Md. 170, 183 , 840 A.2d 715 , ²¹ 723 (2004) (quoting Goldstein & Baron Chartered v. Chesley, 375 Md. 244, 253 , 825 A.2d 985, 990 (2003)). “Under the doctrine, once an appellate court rules upon a question presented on appeal, litigants and lower courts become bound by the ruling, which is considered to be the law of the case.” Id.

(citing Turner v. Hous. Auth., 364 Md. 24, 32 , 770 A.2d 671, 676 (2001)). The function of the doctrine is to prevent piecemeal litigation. Fid.-Balt.

Nat’l Bank & Trust Co. v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 217 Md. 367, 371-72 , 142 A.2d 796, 798 (1958). Thus, litigants cannot prosecute successive appeals in a case that raises the same questions that have been previously decided by this Court in a former appeal of that same case; and, furthermore, they cannot, on the subsequent appeal of the same case raise any question that could have been presented in the previous appeal on the then state of the record, as it existed in the court of original jurisdiction.

If this were not so, any party to a suit could institute as many successive appeals as the fiction of his imagination could produce new reasons to assign as to why his side of the case should prevail, and the litigation would never terminate. Once this Court has ruled upon a question properly presented on an appeal, or, if the ruling be contrary to a question that could have been raised and argued in that appeal on the then state of the record, as aforesaid, such a ruling becomes the ‘law of the case’ and is binding on the litigants and the court alike, unless changed or modified after reargument, and neither the questions decided not the ones that could have been raised and decided are available to be raised in a subsequent appeal. Fid.-Balt. Nat’l Bank & Trust Co., 217 Md. at 372 , 142 A.2d at 798 .

It appears to us, however, that the doctrine of the law of the case, in its proper application, concerns appellate conclusions as to questions of law, not pure questions of fact. Stokes v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 142 Md.App. 440, 446 , 790 A.2d 699, 702 (2002) (citing Turner, 364 Md. at 31-33 , 770 A.2d at 676 -77 and Hagez v. State, 131 Md.App. 402, 418-19 , 749 A.2d 206, 214-15 (2000)) (“Once an appellate court has answered a ²² question of law in a given case, the issue is settled for all future proceedings.”) (emphasis added), cert. denied, 369 Md. 179 , 798 A.2d 552 (2002); see also, e.g, Corby v. McCarthy, 154 Md.App. 446, 480-81 , 840 A.2d 188, 208 (2003) (“The important issue of whether the Guidelines apply in calculating support for a destitute adult child is a question of law, which was certainly resolved as to these parties and their child in McCarthy I for purposes of law of the case.”) (emphasis added); Barrett v. Lohmuller Bldg. Co. of Baltimore City, 151 Md. 133, 139 , 134 A. 37, 39 (1926) (quoting 4 Corpus Juris § 3088, p. 1106) (“As a general rule the doctrine of the ‘law of the case’ applies to all questions of law identical with those on the prior appeal, and on the same facts, and to such questions only.

The doctrine is rarely, and in a very limited class of cases, applied to matters of evidence as distinguished from rulings of law, and a decision on appeal on a question of fact does not generally become the law of the case, nor estop the parties on a second trial from showing the true state of the facts.”) (emphasis added); 2A FED. PROC, L. ED. § 3:793, p. 542 (“The doctrine applies to determinations only of questions of law and not questions of fact.”). Although factual determinations undergirding or mixed with conclusions of law may become the law of the case, 17 pure matters of fact, absent commingling with the application of legal principles, have no estoppel effect under the law of the case doctrine. Barrett, 151 Md. at 139 , 134 A. at 39 .

The doctrine of the law of the case is inapplicable here. The Court of Special Appeals in Reier I reached no definitive conclusion with regard to the point in time at which the SDAT possessed knowledge sufficient to commence an investigation ²³ of Reier. In fact, to the extent that the Reier I panel discussed findings of fact, it specifically stated that it could not render legal conclusions based on the extant fact-finding because of the ambiguity of the factual findings made by the ALJs to that point. This is also true with respect to the legal significance of the date of 9 September 1996, cited by the SDAT as the critical day on which Norris and White conducted a “field audit” of Reier’s misplaced permit properties and discovered the extent of his misconduct sufficient to warrant an investigation.

Because of the ordering and phrasing of the ALJ’s findings, the Reier I court expressed its misgivings about whether this “field audit” was merely of the properties that were the subject of the misplaced permits or a more extensive review of 68 properties. 18 Thus, even if the doctrine of the law of the case were implicated by findings of fact, the Reier I court expressly declined to commit or opine as to any such findings, much less a version supporting the SDAT’s position. The SDAT’s reliance on Stavely v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 376 Md. 108 , 829 A.2d 265 (2003), as support for its “law of the case” argument is misplaced. In Stavely , an ALJ determined that an insurer’s proposed nonrenewal of an automobile liability policy was not justified and, therefore, violated Maryland law. 376 Md. at 115 , 829 A.2d at 269 . The ALJ’s legal conclusion was upheld by the Court of Special Appeals and the Court of Appeals denied certiorari.

Id. Another ALJ presiding over the same case subsequently for purposes of determining an award of attorney’s fees held, notwithstanding the previous final disposition on the issue, that the insurer was justified in not renewing the policy. Id. Upon subsequent judicial review, the Stavely Court concluded that this revisitation of the nonrenewal justification issue was ²⁴ contrary to the doctrine of the law of the case and/or principles of res judicata. 376 Md. at 116-17 , 829 A.2d at 270 .

The SDAT incorrectly imagines Stavely as presenting a scenario similar to what transpired in the present case. First, as we have noted previously, the doctrine of the law of the case does not apply here because no legal conclusions were reached by the Reier I court, unlike in Stavely . Second, the sequence of events in Stavely was not complicated, as here, by an intervening change in a legal standard relevant to the disposition of the case, which required a revisitation and reformulation of relevant fact-finding as previously addressed. 19 The SDAT, however, claims that “the Reier I decision never vacated any facts although it sought clarification of certain events in the sequence.” The SDAT here emphasizes only half of the story. The findings made by the ALJ remained intact to the extent that the Court of Special Appeals did not express doubt as to their precision.

Notably, the intermediate appellate court indicated in Reier I that it was remanding the case for the ALJ to answer specific questions regarding the acquisition by the SDAT of knowledge of Reier’s poor performance and misconduct precisely because of the imprecision of certain factual findings made earlier. The mandate in Reier I vacated the judgments below and instructed the ALJ to conduct “further proceedings in conformity with the views set forth in this opinion,” 20 which the ALJ dutifully carried out by answering the questions posed. See Harrison v. ²⁵ Harrison, 109 Md.App. 652, 666 , 675 A.2d 1003, 1010 (1996) (“[A]ny direction in an order or mandate that proceedings on remand are to be consistent with the opinion would necessarily require the