Opinion ID: 1224256
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did the court err in granting summary judgment to Maniilaq on Chijide's covenant of good faith and fair dealing claim?

Text: Chijide also raises several challenges to the superior court's rejection of her covenant of good faith and fair dealing claim. She first asserts that Maniilaq violated the covenant when it ended her employment because her dismissal was part and parcel of the mistreatment that she received during her years working at the hospital under Shackles's supervision. We disagree. Like all contracts, Chijide's contract with Maniilaq included an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. See Ramsey v. City of Sand Point, 936 P.2d 126, 133 (Alaska 1997). This covenant has both subjective and objective elements. See id. The subjective aspect prohibits an employer from terminating an employee for the purpose of depriving the employee of a contract benefit, and the objective aspect requires an employer to act in a manner that a reasonable person would regard as fair. See id. Chijide has not alleged on appeal that Maniilaq ended her employment in order to deprive her of the benefits of her employment contract. Thus, the only question before this court is whether Maniilaq's actions violated the objective aspect of the covenant. We held in Ramsey that an employer who acts in accordance with the express terms of a contract satisfies the covenant's objective component. See 936 P.2d at 133. The facts of Ramsey provide a helpful analogy to Chijide's situation. After the city of Sand Point terminated Ramsey without investigating his alleged misconduct on the job, he filed suit, arguing in part that the city had violated the covenant of good faith and fair dealing because it treated him unfairly. See id. at 129. Ramsey's contract provided that he could be terminated without cause, as long as he received thirty days' notice and six months' severance pay. See id. at 128. We held that the covenant's objective element could not be interpreted to prohibit what [was] expressly permitted by Ramsey's contract with the City: termination without cause. Id. at 133. As a result, we concluded that the city had not violated the covenant. See id. Similarly, Chijide's contract with Maniilaq permitted Maniilaq to refuse to renew her contract for any reason or for no reason at all as long as it provided her with sixty days' notice of its intent not to renew. As a result, Maniilaq did not violate the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing by failing to renew Chijide's contract. [3] Relying on the letter Shackles sent to Maniilaq's personnel director, Chijide argues next that she was dismissed for cause, and therefore Maniilaq's personnel policies entitled her to notice of the charges against her and a right to appeal; she appears to allege that the fact that she did not receive these remedies violates the implied covenant. Because Chijide did not make this argument to the trial court, she has waived it on appeal. See Revelle v. Marston, 898 P.2d 917, 927 (Alaska 1995). We would reject this argument even if Chijide had preserved it, however, because, as we explained above, we disagree with her premise that Maniilaq dismissed her for cause.