Opinion ID: 1167656
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Did the Complaint Allege a Discharge?

Text: The plaintiff did not allege that the defendants discharged him. Rather, the plaintiff alleged that he was informed that if he did not resign he would be dismissed by defendants F.E. Knight, Carol Williams, Gerald Woodward and Tillamook County and that he was forced to resign. The Court of Appeals, as noted above, concluded that the plaintiff could not maintain an action for wrongful discharge because he had resigned from employment. Although this court has never squarely decided that issue, [3] most other courts have recognized that a resignation is tantamount to a discharge if the resignation was, in effect, involuntary. See 1 Tobias, Litigating Wrongful Discharge Claims 7-86 to 7-90, §§ 7:35-7:36 (1987); see also Beye v. Bureau of National Affairs, 59 Md. App. 642, 477 A.2d 1197, 1201-02 (1984) (citing numerous cases). [4] Where the employee unconditionally has been told resign today or be fired, the employer has decided that the employment relationship is at an end and that the employee shall leave. The employee merely selects the manner in which the employer's will is accomplished. Under such circumstances a fact finder may find that a resignation was a discharge. See Hinthorn v. Roland's of Bloomington, Inc., 119 Ill.2d 526, 116 Ill.Dec. 694, 697, 519 N.E.2d 909, 912 (1988). To conclude that a resignation may never amount to a discharge would exalt form over substance and allow employers to use a ruse to escape liability if their conduct was otherwise improper. To paraphrase the court in Beye v. Bureau of National Affairs, supra, 477 A.2d at 1203, it would defy both reason and fairness to hold liable an employer who wrongfully discharges an employee but to immunize from liability an employer who, for equally improper reasons, induces an employee to resign rather than be fired. We therefore conclude that, in the wrongful discharge setting, the resignation of an employee who unconditionally has been told resign or be fired may be found to be a discharge by the trier of fact. [5] The plaintiff's allegation that he was informed that if he did not resign he would be dismissed by defendants is sufficient to allege a constructive discharge. This, however, is only the first step in the analysis. To adequately allege and prove a claim for wrongful discharge, an employee who has resigned must allege and prove not only that he was discharged, but that the discharge was wrongful. We turn to that question.