Opinion ID: 1160861
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: for a burk tort

Text: ¶ 7 Since its first appearance as a labor law concept under the National Labor Relations Act, the constructive discharge doctrine has been accorded acceptance among the various U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal in Title VII discrimination cases. Today Collier urges Oklahoma to allow a retaliatory constructive discharge to suffice as the basis for bringing a Burk -type claim. ¶ 8 While the concept of retaliatory constructive discharge has been considered in conjunction with several Burk claims, Oklahoma's extant jurisprudence has never specifically approved it as a basis for bringing the public-policy tort. The public-policy tort has as its focus the remediation of wrongful discharges (as that term is delimited by Burk), regardless whether they are explicit or constructive. Discharges falling within the latter class are nonetheless more problematic. Until now the Court has not been called upon to succinctly define the criteria for determining when a constructive discharge has occurred and whether the same will suffice for purposes of the Burk exception to the employment-at-will doctrine. ¶ 9 In Marshall v. OK Rental & Leasing, Inc . [6] the Court observed that a constructive discharge occurs when an employer deliberately makes or allows the employee's working conditions to become so intolerable that a reasonable person [7] subject to them would resign. [8] While accurate, this statement does not adequately define the outside parameters under which a constructive discharge will support a Burk -type claim. ¶ 10 Initially, it must be observed that the Burk tort encompasses a broader range of wrongful discharges that just those involving one of the proscribed categories of discrimination articulated in Title VII or the Oklahoma Anti-Discrimination Act. The Burk tort is available to redress employer violations of any state-declared public policy which culminate in civilly unremedied employee terminations. The test today adopted for ascertaining whether a constructive discharge has occurred is an objective one which assays the complained of employer's conduct through the eyes of a reasonable person standing in the employee's shoe and applies to all constructive discharges pressed under the Burk tort's guise. The focus of today's test is upon the impact of the employer's actions, whether deliberate or not, upon a reasonable employee. The test requires the trial court to inquire (1) whether the employer either knew or should have known of the intolerable work conditions and (2) if the permitted conditions were so intolerable that a reasonable person subject to them would resign. This imposes upon the trial court the obligation to survey the totality of the circumstances which allegedly prompted the constructive discharge, including (but not limited to) the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating; or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee's work performance. [9] If the employer's behavior is so objectively offensive as to alter the conditions of the plaintiff's employment (causing the employee to resign), a retaliatory constructive discharge can be said to have occurred and may serve as a predicate for bringing a Burk -type claim, assuming the tort's other preconditions have been satisfied.