Case Title: Dray v. New Market Poultry Products

Citation: 

Docket Number: 981767

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 1999-09-17T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  All the Justices 
 
 
APRIL L. DRAY 
 
 
 
OPINION BY JUSTICE A. CHRISTIAN COMPTON 
v.  Record No. 981767 
September 17, 1999 
 
NEW MARKET POULTRY PRODUCTS, INC. 
 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY 
John J. McGrath, Jr., Judge 
 
 
This is another case in which an employee seeks to create 
an exception to the Commonwealth's established employment-at-
will doctrine in order to pursue a common-law claim for wrongful 
discharge. 
 
In August 1997, appellant April L. Dray, the employee, 
filed a motion for judgment against appellee New Market Poultry 
Products, Inc., the employer, seeking damages for alleged 
wrongful termination of her employment.  The employer filed a 
demurrer, which the trial court sustained in a May 1998 "Opinion 
and Order."  The employee appeals. 
 
Because a demurrer, which tests the legal sufficiency of 
the motion for judgment, admits the correctness of all material 
facts that are properly pleaded, we shall recite the facts set 
forth in the motion for judgment as if they are true. 
 
The employee worked for the employer from August 1994 until 
she was "fired" on September 11, 1996.  For about three months 
prior to her termination, the employee was a "quality control 
inspector" on the employer's production lines to assure that no 
adulterated poultry products were distributed. 
 
Two months prior to her termination, the employee 
"experienced difficulty" in getting other employees to follow 
proper sanitary rules.  "When management ignored and failed to 
correct the noted deficiencies," the employee, "in conformance 
to her training and assigned duties . . . , informed the plant's 
on-site governmental inspectors."  The inspectors "confirmed the 
unsanitary conditions," according to the allegations, and 
"forced" the employer to correct the deficiencies.  
Subsequently, the employee was told by her supervisor "that she 
would be fired if she ever again brought plant sanitary 
deficiencies to the attention of the . . . governmental 
inspectors." 
 
In the week prior to the employee's termination, she and 
other quality control inspectors condemned as adulterated some 
poultry products based on improper work performed on the plant's 
"wash line."  On the day of the employee's termination, a 
government inspector required the employer to "reprocess a large 
quantity of poultry product due to contamination by metal-laced 
ice." 
 
The employer's management believed that the employee had 
informed the government inspector of this adulterated product.  
She was discharged for violating the "edict" that she not inform 
 
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the inspectors of unsanitary conditions and adulterated poultry 
products.  When the employee asked the reason for her discharge, 
the employer's personnel supervisor informed her that "'it was 
not working out.'" 
 
In her motion for judgment, the employee says she "states a 
common law claim for wrongful termination of employment in 
violation of the public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia."  
Elaborating, the employee asserts the public policy relied upon 
is articulated by the Commonwealth in the "Virginia Meat and 
Poultry Products Inspection Act," Code §§ 3.1-884.17 through  
-884.36 (the Act). 
 
She alleges the employer terminated her in contravention of 
the public policy she finds set forth in the Act that is 
applicable to her.  As a result, she asserts, she has incurred 
damages for which she seeks recovery. 
 
In sustaining the demurrer, the trial court held that the 
motion for judgment did not set forth a legally cognizable claim 
for wrongful discharge.  The court ruled that the plaintiff had 
failed "to extrapolate" from the broad declaration found in the 
Act, of an intent to serve "the public good" generally, a 
specific public policy intended to benefit the class of 
individuals to which the plaintiff belonged.  Thus, the court 
decided, the employee's claim did not qualify as an exception to 
the employment-at-will doctrine.  The trial court was correct. 
 
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Virginia adheres to the common-law doctrine of employment-
at-will.  When a contract calls for the rendition of services, 
but the period of the contract's intended duration cannot be 
determined from its provisions, either party ordinarily is at 
liberty to terminate the contract at will upon giving reasonable 
notice of intention to terminate.  Doss v. Jamco, Inc., 254 Va. 
362, 366, 492 S.E.2d 441, 443 (1997); Stonega Coal and Coke Co. 
v. Louisville and Nashville R.R. Co., 106 Va. 223, 226, 55 S.E. 
551, 552 (1906).  But, "the rule is not absolute."  Bowman v. 
State Bank of Keysville, 229 Va. 534, 539, 331 S.E.2d 797, 801 
(1985). 
 
In Bowman, we recognized that a number of state courts had 
applied exceptions to the rule of terminability.  By way of 
illustration, we referred to several decisions from other 
jurisdictions, e.g., Sheets v. Teddy's Frosted Foods, Inc., 427 
A.2d 385 (Conn. 1980), that had granted such exceptions, but we 
did not adopt the rationale or exceptions articulated in those 
cases.  Bowman, 229 Va. at 539-40, 331 S.E.2d at 801. 
 
In Bowman, we applied "a narrow exception to the 
employment-at-will rule."  Id. at 540, 331 S.E.2d at 801.  We 
held that two bank employees, who were also stockholders of the 
bank corporation, had stated a cause of action in tort against 
the bank and bank directors when the employees were discharged 
after failing to heed a threat to vote their stock according to 
 
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the wishes of their employer.  We said that the public policy 
set forth in former Code § 13.1-32 (now § 13.1-662) conferred 
upon the plaintiffs as stockholders the right to vote their 
shares "free of duress and intimidation imposed on individual 
stockholders by corporate management."  Id., 331 S.E.2d at 801. 
 
In the present case, the plaintiff seeks to mount a 
generalized, common-law "whistleblower" retaliatory discharge 
claim.  Such a claim has not been recognized as an exception to 
Virginia's employment-at-will doctrine, and we refuse to 
recognize it today.  See Lawrence Chrysler Plymouth Corp. v. 
Brooks, 251 Va. 94, 465 S.E.2d 806 (1996) (motor vehicle 
repairman unsuccessfully sued employer alleging discharge for 
his refusal to use method of repair that he believed unsafe); 
Miller v. SEVAMP, Inc., 234 Va. 462, 362 S.E.2d 915 (1987) 
(retaliatory discharge claim rejected when employee alleged she 
was fired for appearing as witness at co-employee's grievance 
hearing). 
 
The Act upon which this plaintiff relies does not confer 
any rights or duties upon her or any other similarly situated 
employee of the defendant.  Instead, the Act's objective is "to 
provide for meat and poultry products inspection programs that 
will impose and enforce requirements with respect to intrastate 
operations and commerce."  Code § 3.1-884.19. 
 
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The plaintiff identifies two of the Act's provisions that 
she says articulate a public policy allowing her to evade the 
employment-at-will doctrine.  She relies upon Code § 3.1-884.22, 
which forbids intrastate distribution of uninspected, 
adulterated, or misbranded meat and poultry products.  She also 
relies upon Code § 3.1-884.25(2), which establishes criminal 
penalties for any person who "resists, . . . impedes, . . . or 
interferes" with state meat inspectors.  These provisions do not 
secure any rights to this plaintiff, nor do any other provisions 
of the Act.  Rather, the Act establishes a regulatory mechanism 
directed only to government inspectors and industry management. 
 
In essence, the plaintiff claims she has been wrongfully 
terminated because she had a right to disregard management's 
requirements that she report to her company superiors, and not 
directly to government inspectors, when she believed she was 
acting to assure the safety of the employer's products.  
However, the Act affords plaintiff no express statutory right in 
this regard that is in specific furtherance of the state's 
public policy regarding inspections of meat and poultry 
products. 
 
Consequently, we hold that the trial court did not err in 
sustaining the employer's demurrer.  Thus, the judgment below 
will be 
                                             Affirmed. 
 
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