Opinion ID: 881961
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: at will

Text: Respondent Big Horn County School District (School District) argues that Medicine Horse is an at will employee and is governed by the Montana at will statute: Termination at will. An employment having no specified term may be terminated at the will of either party on notice to the other... . Section 39-2-503, MCA. We have concluded that an at will employee is one whose term of employment has no specific duration. Hobbs v. Pacific Hide and Fur Depot (1989), 236 Mont. 503, 771 P.2d 125. Medicine Horse has provided no evidence that his employment had any specified term. His employment was not governed by a contract which specified the duration of his employ, nor do the laws and regulations governing his position as an employee of the School District specify any such term. Quoting from a 1984 article in the Montana Arbitrators Association Quarterly, the appellant contends that the doctrine of at will employment is no longer viable in Montana. While that may have appeared to the author to be the case in 1984, we disagree that such is the state of the law in Montana. In Prout v. Sears, Roebuck and Co. (1989), 236 Mont. 152, 772 P.2d 288, we applied the at will statute to persons who have no specific term to their employment. And while Prout was decided on the basis of pre-Wrongful Discharge From Employment Act law, neither that Act nor any other action by the Montana legislature or this Court has nullified the at will designation or § 39-2-503, MCA. We hold that Medicine Horse is an at will employee who had no specific duration or term for his employment with the School District.