Opinion ID: 1453310
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Tortious Discharge: Public Policy Tort

Text: As pointed out in K Mart, 103 Nev. at 46, 732 P.2d at 1369, although a public policy tort cannot ordinarily be committed absent the employer-employee relationship, the tort, the wrong itself, is not dependent upon or directly related to a contract of continued employment such as that existing in the present case. The tortious discharge, in other words, stands by itself; and although it arises out of the employer-employee relationship, it is not dependent on a contract of continued employment between the parties. The essence of a tortious discharge is the wrongful, usually retaliatory, interruption of employment by means which are deemed to be contrary to the public policy of this state. The prototypical tortious discharge case is found in Hansen v. Harrah's, 100 Nev. 60, 675 P.2d 394 (1984), in which an employee claimed to have been discharged to penalize him because he had filed a worker's compensation claim. 100 Nev. at 62, 675 P.2d at 396. Comparable tortious discharges may arise when an employer dismisses an employee in retaliation for the employee's doing of acts which are consistent with or supportive of sound public policy and the common good. If an action for tortious discharge is to lie in the case now before us, it must first be established that Western States has, in its discharge of Jones, violated the public policy of this state. We conclude that it is violative of public policy for an employer to dismiss an employee for refusing to work under conditions unreasonably dangerous to the employee. The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Act (NOSHA) states that [t]he legislature finds that such safety and health in employment is a matter greatly affecting the public interest of this state. NRS 618.015(2). After reviewing provisions in the California Labor Code which are comparable to NOSHA, the California Court of Appeal had this to say about public policy and the termination of employees because of their seeking a safe work place: It requires little analysis to perceive that the legislative purpose underlying these provisions would be substantially undermined if employers were permitted to discharge employees simply for protesting working conditions which they reasonably believe constitute a hazard to their own health or safety, or the health or safety of others. Achievement of the statutory objective  a safe and healthy working environment for all employees  requires that employees be free to call their employer's attention to such conditions, so that the employer can be made aware of their existence, and given opportunity to correct them if correction is needed. The public policy thus implicated extends beyond the question of fairness to the particular employee; it concerns protection of employees against retaliatory dismissal for conduct which, in light of the statutes, deserves to be encouraged, rather than inhibited. In that respect, the policy at stake is similar to that which informed the court's decision in Petermann v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (1959) 174 Cal. App.2d 184 [344 P.2d 25], which held that the state's policy of encouraging truthful testimony before legislative bodies would be undermined if an employer could terminate an employee for refusing to commit perjury. Hentzel v. Singer Co., 138 Cal. App.3d 290, 298, 188 Cal. Rptr. 159 (1982). NRS 618.375 requires that all employers adopt practices which insure safe employment and that employers do everything reasonably necessary to protect the lives, safety and health of their employees. NRS 618.385(1) expressly prohibits employers from requiring employees to go or be in any ... place of employment which is not safe and healthful, a prohibition which the jury certainly could have found to have been violated in this case. There can be no doubt but that the public policy of this state favors safe employment practices and the protection of the health and safety of workers on the job. NRS 618.015(2). This being the case, we hold that dismissal of an employee for seeking a safe and healthy working environment is contrary to the public policy of this state. Concluding that Western States violated public policy when it dismissed Jones does not end the matter, however. In Sands Regent v. Valgardson, 105 Nev. 436, 439-40, 777 P.2d 898, 899-900 (1989), we refused to recognize an action for tortious discharge even though the defendant had clearly violated Nevada's public policy against age discrimination. [10] We refused to recognize an independent tort action for violation of the public policy against age-discrimination because the plaintiffs in Valgardson had already recovered tort damages in sums of $69,010.00 and $125,560.00 under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq., and under NRS 613.310 et seq. Id. at 439-40, 777 P.2d at 900. It would not have been fair to the defendant in Valgardson to have allowed an additional tort remedy under the common law Hansen type of tortious discharge. It is quite obvious that the Valgardson plaintiffs were vindicating much more than a mere contractual right to lost earnings. The recovery in Valgardson of $125,000.00 for wrongful discharge was clearly a tort rather than a breach of contract recovery. This conclusion is supported by the recent case of Rickel v. C.I.R., 900 F.2d 655 (3rd Cir.1990), a tax case in which the court held that damages in an Age Discrimination in Employment Act suit are not taxable because they are analogous to redress of a tort claim for personal injury, irrespective of non-personal components such as compensation for lost wages. The court stated: [T]he scope of [the ADEA] goes beyond the mere employer-employee context, protecting individuals from various forms of discrimination even if they are not yet in a contractual relationship ... [C]ourts in other jurisdictions ... have characterized an action to redress discrimination in the workplace as a tort claim for personal injuries whether the discrimination was based on race, sex, or age. Thus, focusing on the nature of the claim, we are convinced that the taxpayer's discrimination suit under the ADEA was analogous to the assertion of a tort type claim to redress a personal injury. ... The taxpayer merely sought the remedies afforded by the statute as compensation for the personal injury he suffered as a result of the employer's act of discrimination; the requested remedies were not separate claims in themselves to redress the employer's breach of a contract. The non-personal consequences of the discrimination, the loss of wages, does not transform discrimination into a non-personal injury. 900 F.2d at 662-63 (emphasis added; citations omitted). The dissent expresses the view that this case is indistinguishable from Valgardson, and that Jones's rights are sufficiently vindicated by the remedy provided in NRS Chapter 618. On the contrary, this case is quite clearly distinguishable from Valgardson. In Valgardson, the statutory remedies at issue allowed discrimination victims to bring suit and, as discussed above, recover tort damages for their injuries. Conversely, in the present case the statutory remedy simply provides for an action by the administrator of the division of occupational safety and health, and then only for reinstatement and past wages and not general damages. [11] The statutory remedy at issue here is far less comprehensive than the one in Valgardson, in which damages of a tort-like nature had been recovered by the plaintiffs. It is in precisely such cases, i.e., where no comprehensive statutory remedy exists, that courts have been willing to create public policy tort liability. See Wehr v. Burroughs Corp., 438 F. Supp. 1052, 1055 (E.D.Pa. 1977), aff'd, 619 F.2d 276 (3d Cir.1980). Here, Jones had no comprehensive statutory or other tort remedy available to compensate him for the civil wrong committed against him by Western States. He was, therefore, entitled to pursue an action for tortious discharge against his employer. [12] For this reason, the judgment against Western States is affirmed.