Opinion ID: 177587
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: 2006 promises

Text: DeFranco also argues that Sun employees promised him permanent employment in 2006. 3 According to DeFranco, in February 2006, while DeFranco was still in the United Kingdom, Steve Wendt of Sun told DeFranco that they had to bring him back to the United States early, and added, “[W]e’ll find you a permanent job when you get back.” (Aplt. App. at 424.) Then, in April, after DeFranco returned to Colorado, Eula Adams “affirmed the guarantee of permanent placement for [DeFranco] in the new organization.” (Id. at 428.) Prior to these statements, DeFranco was an at-will employee of Sun. This is either because Sun explicitly provided for at-will employment in the Confirmation Letter it sent to DeFranco in December 2005 or because Sun became a party to the Secondment Agreement (which also provided for at-will employment) at some point during the merger. We need not definitively resolve whether Sun became party to the Secondment Agreement, however, because either way, DeFranco was an at-will employee. 4 3 Because DeFranco explicitly alleges that Wendt and Adams were Sun employees and not employees of StorageTek, we conclude that his breach of contract and promissory estoppel claims based on these promises are brought solely against Sun and not the other two Defendants. 4 Defendants argue that Sun could invoke the Secondment Agreement’s provision requiring all modifications to be in writing to bar Wendt’s or Adams’s statements from modifying the at-will employment outlined in that agreement. This is wrong, for two reasons. First, in Colorado, “a subsequent oral agreement between the parties may modify a provision of an earlier written contract, even in the face of a provision in the original contract that modifications must be in writing.” Agritrack, Inc. v. DeJohn 15 The question, then, is whether Wendt’s and Adams’s statements altered the at-will employment relationship that existed. “Colorado law presumes the employment relationship to be terminable at will by either party without liability.” Jaynes v. Centura Health Corp., 148 P.3d 241, 243 (Colo. Ct. App. 2006). “The employee may, however, rebut the effect of that rule by proving that an explicit term of the employment contract restricts the employer’s right to discharge . . . .” Schur v. Storage Tech. Corp., 878 P.2d 51, 53 (Colo. Ct. App. 1994). In addition, “even if the requisites for formation of a contract are not found,” DeFranco may rebut the presumption of at-will employment under a promissory estoppel theory. See Continental Air Lines, Inc. v. Keenan, 731 P.2d 708, 712 (Colo. 1987). We will therefore consider whether these 2006 promises can support either DeFranco’s breach of contract claim or his promissory estoppel claim against Sun. Housemoving, Inc., 25 P.3d 1187, 1193 (Colo. 2001) (emphasis added); see also James H. Moore & Assocs. Realty, Inc. v. Arrowhead at Vail, 892 P.2d 367, 372 (Colo. Ct. App. 1994) (“[G]enerally, a written contract may be modified by a later oral agreement . . . even in the face of a specific provision in the written agreement that all modifications must be in writing.”). So even if the Secondment Agreement applied to Sun, a subsequent oral agreement could still modify the at-will employment provision of that agreement. Second, even if the no-oral-modification clause of the Secondment Agreement could be enforced to bar Wendt’s guarantee of permanent employment made in February 2006, it would not apply to Adams’s statement because his promise, in April, was made after the Secondment Agreement expired on March 31, 2006. Thus, the Secondment Agreement’s provision requiring all modifications to be in writing does not impact the ensuing analysis of whether Wendt’s and/or Adams’s statements created a legally binding promise for permanent employment. 16
In his breach of contract claim, DeFranco claims that Wendt’s and Adams’s statements created a contract for permanent employment. However, “in the absence of special consideration or an express stipulation as to the length of employment, employment for an indefinite term presumptively creates an at-will employment relationship that is terminable at any time by either party.” Pickell v. Ariz. Components Co., 931 P.2d 1184, 1186 (Colo. 1997). Colorado courts have held that a contract providing for “permanent employment,” such as that alleged by DeFranco here, “is no more than an indefinite general hiring terminable at the will of either party.” Pittman v. Larson Distrib. Co., 724 P.2d 1379, 1383 (Colo. Ct. App. 1986). “The rationale for this rule is that, if the employee gives to the employer consideration beyond that derived from his or her services as an employee, the employee has effectively ‘purchased’ the job and he or she should not be deprived of it easily.” Schur, 878 P.2d at 54. Accordingly, unless DeFranco can show that he provided special consideration to Sun in exchange for Sun’s alleged promise to provide permanent employment, no enforceable contract providing for anything other than employment at will exists. “Special consideration” is consideration other than services incident to the employee’s employment. Id. Examples of special consideration include “accepting a reduced salary, releasing claims against the employer, or agreeing to purchase property from the employer.” Id. DeFranco claims that he provided special consideration by 17 foregoing the opportunity to look for other jobs in 2006. “Relinquishing other employment, however, generally is not alone considered ‘special consideration.’ Giving up another position is necessary before the employee is in a position to accept and perform the offered employment and is not a price or consideration paid to the new employer.” Pickell v. Ariz. Components Co., 902 P.2d 392, 397 (Colo. Ct. App. 1994), rev’d on other grounds by 931 P.2d 1184. If relinquishment of another job does not constitute special consideration, then merely deciding not to look for another job cannot either. In addition, it does not appear from the record that DeFranco’s foregoing a job search was bargained for by Sun—or, indeed, that Sun was even aware that DeFranco was considering looking for another job—and therefore it was probably not consideration at all. See Lucht’s Concrete Pumping, Inc. v. Horner, 224 P.3d 355, 358 (Colo. Ct. App. 2009) (“Consideration is defined as something (such as an act, a forbearance, or a return promise) bargained for and received by a promisor from a promise; that which motivates a person to do something, especially to engage in a legal act.” (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted)), cert. granted on other grounds, 2010 WL 341383 (Colo. Feb. 1, 2010) (No. 09SC627). DeFranco also contends that agreeing to stay on to facilitate the merger and staying to finish the 9,000 cases mentioned in the Amendment to the Secondment Agreement constituted special consideration. We fail to see how these actions were anything other than services incident to his employment. See Schur, 878 P.2d at 54. Remaining with the company is just another way of saying that DeFranco accepted Sun’s 18 offer of employment, and his agreeing to finish the 9,000 cases was also just agreeing to do the task that the company set for him. Refusing to perform either of these tasks would have been refusing to do his job duties, and so they do not constitute special consideration. (See Amendment to Secondment Agreement, Aplt. App. at 244 (defining DeFranco’s job to include “[a]uditing an engineering queue that consists of 9,000 open customer issues”).) Thus, DeFranco did not provide special consideration in exchange for Sun’s alleged promise of permanent employment, and so his employment continued to be at will. DeFranco’s breach of contract claim against Sun must therefore fail. 5
Although we conclude that no valid contract providing for “permanent” employment existed between DeFranco and Sun, DeFranco’s promissory estoppel claim 5 To the extent DeFranco also means to bring a breach of contract claim on the ground that Defendants did not provide him with a “Comparable Position” as required by the Secondment Agreement, such a claim must also fail. The Secondment Agreement provides: Upon the end of the Term, Company will make reasonable efforts as determined by the Company to return you to a position within Company, StorageTek, or a StorageTek Affiliate which is defined by Company as a position similar in duties, scope, and compensation (“Comparable Position”) to either the position which you held immediately preceding the secondment or the secondment position. (Aplt. App. at 209 (emphasis added).) The Amendment to the Secondment Agreement defined DeFranco’s job as “Tech Support Manager 3, E11,” which included, among other tasks, “[a]uditing an engineering queue that consists of 9,000 open customer issues.” (Id. at 244.) In his deposition, DeFranco admitted that when he returned to Colorado in April 2006—after the end of the term of the Secondment Agreement—he continued to work in the same role performing the same tasks. Therefore, Defendants complied with any obligation they had pursuant to the Secondment Agreement to provide him with a “Comparable Position” upon his return to Colorado. 19 may still be viable. See, e.g., Marquardt, 200 P.3d at 1131 (“In Colorado, promissory estoppel is available as a theory of recovery when breach of contract fails.”). However, we conclude that this claim must also fail due to a lack of special consideration. In Pickell v. Arizona Components Co., the Colorado Supreme Court held that “Colorado adheres to the general rule that, in the absence of special consideration or an express stipulation as to the length of employment, employment for an indefinite term presumptively creates an at-will employment relationship that is terminable at any time by either party.” 931 P.2d at 1186. One could argue that the special consideration requirement should only apply to breach of contract claims and not promissory estoppel claims like the one we have here, because the general purpose of promissory estoppel is to enforce promises that do not lead to the creation of a contract. See, e.g., Mariani v. Rocky Mountain Hosp. & Med. Serv., 902 P.2d 429, 435 (Colo. Ct. App. 1994) (recognizing that promissory estoppel claim could be brought “even though the elements of a formal contract were lacking”). Nevertheless, we believe that Pickell forecloses such an argument, because the plaintiff in Pickell brought only a claim for promissory estoppel, and the Colorado Supreme Court still determined that the requirement of “special consideration or an express stipulation as to the length of employment” applied to that claim. See Pickell, 931 P.2d at 1186. If that requirement does not apply to promissory estoppel claims, there would simply be no reason for the Pickell court to even mention it. Thus, consistent with our obligation to predict how the Colorado Supreme Court would resolve this issue, see Pompa, 520 F.3d at 1142, we must conclude that since 20 DeFranco did not provide any special consideration or express stipulation as to the length of employment, the district court properly entered summary judgment on DeFranco’s promissory estoppel claim.