Opinion ID: 2821610
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The May 2012 Layoff.

Text: In the court below, Mason contended that TSA's termination of his employment as part of a company-wide reduction in force on May 17, 2012 constituted termination without cause within the purview of the Agreement and, thus, triggered an entitlement to severance payments. Because Mason did not renew this contention in his opening brief on appeal, he waived it. See DeCaro v. Hasbro, Inc., 580 F.3d 55, 64 (1st Cir. 2009). And while Mason did attempt to resurrect this contention in his reply brief, that was too late. See Cipes v. Mikasa, Inc., 439 F.3d 52, 55 (1st Cir. 2006); Sandstrom v. ChemLawn Corp., 904 F.2d 83, 87 (1st Cir. 1990). We add that even if this contention had been preserved on appeal, it would fail in light of our holding that TSA's timely exercise of its right of non-renewal terminated the Agreement without terminating Mason's employment. See supra Part II.B. We explain briefly. To begin, TSA validly exercised its right of non-renewal effective March 31, 2012. Consequently, Mason's subsequent employment was not covered by the Agreement but, instead, was for no specified term. Cal. Lab. Code § 2922. Under California - 21 - law, employment without a fixed term is presumed to be at will. See id.; Guz v. Bechtel Nat'l, Inc., 8 P.3d 1089, 1100 (Cal. 2000). Mason attempts to overcome this presumption. He suggests that since he continued to work for TSA after the expiration of the Agreement, performing the same tasks under the same job title for the same salary and benefits as he previously had received, an implied-in-fact contract arose between April 1 and May 17. In his view, this implied contract amounted to a continuation of the Agreement, so that he enjoyed the same severance protections on May 17 as he had when the Agreement was in force. This is little more than wishful thinking. Under California law, a court cannot imply a contract in fact containing terms that directly contradict terms of an express at-will agreement. See Tomlinson v. Qualcomm, Inc., 118 Cal. Rptr. 2d 822, 830 (Cal. Ct. App. 2002); Halvorsen v. Aramark Unif. Servs., Inc., 77 Cal. Rptr. 2d 383, 385 (Cal. Ct. App. 1998). This is especially true where the written agreement was signed by the employee and expressly limits the manner in which the at-will provisions may be altered. See, e.g., Starzynski v. Capital Pub. Radio, Inc., 105 Cal. Rptr. 2d 525, 529 (Cal. Ct. App. 2001). Here, Mason signed two documents in December of 2011 — the Offer Letter and the New Agreement — which explicitly acknowledged that, absent the Agreement, his employment with TSA would be at will. - 22 - What is more, each document stipulated that the at-will provisions could not be altered except by a writing signed both by Mason and TSA's president. In the face of these unmodified documents, Mason cannot overcome the presumption that his employment on May 17 was at will. See id. Therefore, his layoff did not entitle him to the prophylaxis of the Agreement (which had by then expired). See Halvorsen, 77 Cal. Rptr. 2d at 385. In an effort to change the trajectory of the debate, Mason argued below that even if his implied contract argument failed, the non-renewal of the Agreement did not take effect on April 1 because the Amendment (which had an effective date of January 1) by some mysterious alchemy caused the Agreement's effective date to migrate from April 1 to January 1. By this logic, the non-renewal could not have been effective before December 31, 2012 — and Mason would have still been covered by the Agreement (and its severance protections) when he was laid off in May. This argument is jejune. The Amendment makes pellucid that the only aspect of the Agreement that it altered was to substitute TSA for Tejas. It provided that this substitution would take effect on January 1, 2012, but it did not provide that either the term of the Agreement or its effective date would in any way be revised. - 23 - That is game, set, and match. We hold that Mason's claim for severance benefits stemming from his layoff on May 17, 2012 has been waived; and that, in all events, summary judgment on that claim was appropriate.