Opinion ID: 1160861
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the burk public-policy tort: an exception to the employment-at-will doctrine

Text: ¶ 4 The submitted query's essence is whether quid pro quo sexual harassment which culminates in an employee's constructive discharge is actionable under an exception  first enunciated in Burk v. K-Mart Corp., 1989 OK 22, 770 P.2d 24  to the common law's employment-at-will doctrine. The Burk exception's availability to support a claim for wrongful discharge based upon sexual harassment has been considered but a few times since 1989. ¶ 5 Oklahoma's jurisprudence has historically evinced a great respect  which abides even to this day  for the common-law doctrine that an employment contract of indefinite duration may be terminated for good cause, for no cause, or even for cause morally wrong with no liability for breach of contract. [3] It was in this context that the Court in Burk first crafted a narrow tort-based exception to the employment-at-will doctrine. A private cause of action for wrongful discharge was made necessary because of unchecked employer power to disregard, and hence frustrate, public-policy mandates which had been articulated by Oklahoma's legislature. [4] Because the exception stands in derogation of the common-law terminable-at-will doctrine and further because public policy is oftentimes amorphous in nature, the Burk court limited a discharged employee's use of the public-policy tort to situations falling within narrowly prescribed guidelines. The Burk tort only lies when an employer violates [by wrongful discharge] public-policy goals which are clearly articulated in existing law  constitutional, statutory or jurisprudential  and then only if there is no adequate, statutorily-expressed remedy for the same. At a minimum the common-law tort embraces situations where an employee is discharged for refusing to act in violation of an established and well-defined public policy. [5]