Court Opinion

ID: 9884106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:37:17.06887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:35.616302
License: Public Domain

*84FOLEY, Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I fully concur in sustaining the damages awarded Anderson, including attorney’s fees, because of the shabby treatment she received from her employers, but I would go further.
Anderson should have received damages through the time of trial. The trial court terminated damages in 1983 on the theory that plaintiff could have obtained employment by early 1983. The record discloses that Anderson testified that she has at all times sought comparable employment. She immediately prepared her resume and obtained letters of recommendation which she sent to numerous companies. She read and answered want ads, registered with an employment agency, and finally advertised to and did perform freelance secretarial work.
There is no evidence in the record to establish that Anderson was offered a comparable position through the time of trial. The trial court should be reversed in its holding limiting damages through 1983 as not sustained by the evidence. Witnesses for HKM “speculated” that Anderson could have obtained employment. It is a basic rule of the law of damages that an award may not be based upon speculation or conjecture. The same standard ought to apply if it claimed that Anderson could have mitigated damages.
The case at hand is one where an employee was wrongfully discharged. The rule is:
When a wrongfully discharged employee fails to exert a reasonable effort to pursue or unreasonably declines to accept other employment, the rule of avoidable consequences may prevent him from recovering the full amount of the salary promised under the contract. Recognizing that, peculiar to employment contracts, the working hours of a wrongfully discharged employee are at his sole disposal, 1 Restatement, Contracts, § 336(1), sets forth the following rule:
“Damages are not recoverable for harm that the plaintiff should have foreseen and could have avoided by reasonable effort without undue risk, expense, or humiliation.”
Ordinarily, a wrongfully discharged employee can readily foresee that, if he unreasonably declines to pursue or accept similar employment in the same locality, his damages will continue to increase. The restatement rule thus recognizes that in situations where a wrongfully discharged employee does nothing to avert unnecessary loss the increased damage is more properly charged to the employee than the employer. The burden of proof rests on the employer to establish that reasonable steps were not taken by the employee to mitigate foreseeable damages. The employer must also establish that, had other available employment been accepted, the employee could have avoided his damages in whole or in part without “undue risk [or] expense” or without suffering “humiliation” in the sense of being embarrassed, chagrined, or degraded. See, also, Cooper v. Stronge & Warner Co., 111 Minn. 177, 126 N.W. 541 (1910); Bennett v. Morton, 46 Minn. 113, 48 N.W. 678 (1891).
Soules v. Independent School District No. 518, 258 N.W.2d 103, 106-07 (Minn.1977) (emphasis supplied).
In my judgment, based upon the foregoing authorities, the employer did not meet its burden of proof, the finding is not sustained by the evidence and the case should be remanded to award Anderson damages through the time of trial.