Opinion ID: 1167656
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Wrongful Discharge and Employment At Will; Oregon Exceptions

Text: One of the plaintiff's arguments is that his termination from employment constitutes a tortious wrongful discharge under an Oregon exception to the at-will-employment rule. We will trace briefly the development of the at-will-employment rule and its exceptions. English and early American courts ruled that when a contract provided for an annual salary the employer impliedly agreed to a one-year term of employment during which the employee could not be discharged without good cause. See Murg & Scharman, Employment at Will: Do the Exceptions Overwhelm the Rule? 23 B C L Rev 329, 332 (1982) (hereinafter cited as Murg & Scharman); Selznick, Society and Industrial Justice 125 (1969). Blackstone explained that [i]f the hiring be general without any particular time limited, the law construes it to be a hiring for a year; upon a principle of natural equity, that the servant shall serve, and the master maintain him, throughout all the revolutions of the respective seasons, as well when there is work to be done, as when there is not: but the contract may be made for any larger or smaller term. 1 Blackstone, Commentaries . American courts began to discard this English formulation and to develop an American rule in the late nineteenth century. See Feinman, The Development of the Employment at Will Rule, 20 Am J L Hist 118, 122-23 (1976) (hereinafter cited as Feinman). The crystallization of an American rule is attributed to Horace Wood, whose 1877 treatise on employment relations stated: With us the rule is inflexible, that a general or indefinite hiring is prima facie a hiring at will, and if the servant seeks to make it out a yearly hiring, the burden is upon him to establish it by proof. A hiring at so much a day, week, month or year, no time being specified, is an indefinite hiring    and is determinable at the will of either party   . Wood, Master and Servant 283, § 136 (2d ed 1886). (Footnote omitted.) Wood's formulation was accepted by courts and quickly became the American rule. See Feinman, 20 Am J L Hist at 126. Perhaps the classic statement of the rule was rendered in Payne v. Railroad Company, 81 Tenn. 507, 519-20, 49 Am Rep 666 (1884), overruled on other grounds, Hutton v. Watters, 132 Tenn 527, 179 SW 134 (1915), in which the Tennessee Supreme Court declared that employers may dismiss their employes at will, be they many or few, for good cause, for no cause or even for cause morally wrong, without being thereby guilty of a legal wrong. Oregon appears to have recognized this rule in McKinney v. Statesman Pub. Co., 34 Or 509, 511-14, 56 P 651 (1899). [6] By the eve of World War I it had become the law in the `great majority of states.' Feinman, 20 Am J L Hist at 126 (quoting Labatt, Master and Servant § 155 (1913)). Dissatisfaction with the harshness of the rule led legislatures and courts to carve out exceptions. Two notable statutory exceptions, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 USC § 151 et seq, and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 USC § 2000e et seq, placed limitations on the types of causes for which employees may be discharged. [7] In addition, some courts have recognized three common-law exceptions to the at-will doctrine: discharge in contravention of some significant public policy; breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing; and breach of an implied-in-fact contract. [8] See generally Miller & Estes, Recent Judicial Limitations on the Right to Discharge: A California Trilogy, 16 U.C. Davis L.Rev. 65 (1982). Although this court in recent years has recognized several exceptions to the at-will-employment rule, in each instance our opinion has restated the general at-will-employment rule. See, e.g., Delaney v. Taco Time Int'l, 297 Or. 10, 14, 681 P.2d 114 (1984); Nees v. Hocks, 272 Or. 210, 216, 536 P.2d 512 (1975). In Patton v. J.C. Penney Co., 301 Or. 117, 120, 719 P.2d 854 (1986), we stated that [g]enerally an employer may discharge an employee at any time and for any reason, absent a contractual, statutory or constitutional requirement [to the contrary]. Termination of employment ordinarily does not create a tortious cause of action. (Citations omitted.) The Patton opinion reviewed a series of recent employment termination cases ( Nees v. Hocks, supra ; Holien v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 298 Or. 76, 689 P.2d 1292 (1984); Delaney v. Taco Time Int'l., supra ; Simpson v. Western Graphics, 293 Or. 96, 643 P.2d 1276 (1982); Brown v. Transcon Lines, 284 Or. 597, 588 P.2d 1087 (1978); and Walsh v. Consolidated Freightways, 278 Or. 347, 563 P.2d 1205 (1977)) and enumerated the following exceptions: (a) a discharge for exercising a job-related right, [9] Brown v. Transcon Lines, supra (employee who alleged that he had been discharged for filing workers' compensation claim may bring tort action because statutes forbidding discrimination against employee who files workers' compensation claim constitute legislative recognition of an important public policy and the discharge frustrated that substantial public interest), and (b) a discharge for complying with a public duty, Nees v. Hocks, supra (employer can be liable in tort for discharging an employee for serving on a jury). In the relevant portion of the second claim, the plaintiff alleges that his constructive discharge was a result of plaintiff's knowledge of improper activities by the defendants   . He also alleges that the defendants forced him to resign because of personal and political considerations unto themselves rather than plaintiff's inadequate performance of his duties and that the plaintiff's resignation was the result of vindictiveness on the part of defendant Gerald Woodward   . These allegations might question the defendants' motivations, but that is not enough to make out a case of wrongful discharge. The pleadings contain no allegations that the plaintiff was discharged for complying with or fulfilling a public duty or for exercising an employment-related right. [10] Even if we were to assume that the plaintiff's knowledge of the defendants' improper activities related to a public duty or a job-related right, plaintiff fails to plead that, armed with that knowledge, he fulfilled (or would have fulfilled) the public duty or that he exercised (or would have exercised) the job-related right. We therefore affirm the trial court's dismissal of the plaintiff's claim for wrongful discharge.