Opinion ID: 2192876
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Request for Resignation October 1977

Text: As indicated in the preceding discussion of the facts in this case, by the summer of 1977, considerable tension existed in Hubbard's employment relationship with UPI. Indeed, in October 1977, Lyon concluded that UPI had just and sufficient cause to dismiss Hubbard. However, he opted to attempt to negotiate a resignation because it is UPI's preferred method of terminating an employee. At Lyon's direction, Macchini visited Minneapolis on October 13, 1977, for the purpose of asking Hubbard for his resignation. They met and Macchini told Hubbard that New York wanted his resignation, and that it would be best if he resigned because if he were fired it would prejudice him in a future job search. Macchini told Hubbard that while he was a good photographer, he was a poor business manager, and that there was no future for him at UPI. Hubbard testified that he was stunned. Macchini offered Hubbard full dismissal pay and time to find another job. Macchini testified that he did not discuss Hubbard's alcoholism. However, Hubbard remembered Macchini's saying, in response to a question from Hubbard, that he was not sure whether UPI's request for Hubbard's resignation was prompted by Hubbard's treatment for alcoholism; but that if Hubbard had told Macchini sooner that he was an alcoholic, maybe this wouldn't have happened. After the meeting, on their way back to the office, Macchini and Hubbard talked for about 3 minutes, but their respective accounts of the substance of this conversation differ. Hubbard recalls Macchini's reiterating that it was in Hubbard's best interests to resign, saying that there was nothing Hubbard could do to save his job, and threatening that UPI would get him if it took 5 years. Hubbard testified that he was extremely bothered by the fact that he had just been threatened. Macchini, however, recalls that in this conversation he told Hubbard that one of these days a big story would come along  whether in 1 year or 5 years  and Hubbard would blow it, and he would not be able to save Hubbard's job. Macchini did not see his statement as a threat to Hubbard, but simply as a statement of the way things stood. Hubbard refused to resign.