Court Opinion

ID: 9481879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:34:34.548723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:38.298801
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Our case is a clone of Zaniecki v. P.A. Bergner & Co., 143 Ill.App.3d 668, 97 Ill.Dec. 756, 493 N.E.2d 419 (3d Dist.1986) (Heiple, J.). Bergner fired an employee who complained within the firm that a managerial worker was stealing the firm’s property. Zaniecki held that the firm did not violate Illinois’ rule against retaliatory discharges. Today we say that Zaniecki was wrongly decided, even though no state court has disagreed with its outcome and its author now sits on the Supreme Court of Illinois, which has begun trimming the retaliatory discharge tort. Fellhauer v. Geneva, 142 Ill.2d 495, 154 Ill.Dec. 649, 568 N.E.2d 870 (1991).
Fellhauer unanimously holds that an employee fired for protesting the delay of a favorable public contract to purchase electricity may not obtain damages or reinstatement. Although the court conceded that public policy promotes obtaining power from the lowest bidder and assumed that a discharge of one who sought to achieve this end would undermine that public policy, the court also concluded that extending the tort of retaliatory discharge would infringe excessively on the employer’s control of its work force. It limited Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc., 74 Ill.2d 172, 23 Ill.Dec. 559, 384 N.E.2d 353 (1978), and Palmateer v. International Harvester Co., 85 Ill.2d 124, 52 Ill.Dec. 13, 421 N.E.2d 876 (1981):
In both Kelsay and Palmateer, the court recognized that an employer could effectively frustrate a significant public policy by using its power of dismissal in a coercive manner. In those circumstances, recognition of a cause of action for retaliatory discharge was considered necessary to vindicate the public policy underlying the employee’s activity, and to deter employer conduct inconsistent with that policy. Such compelling circumstances are absent here.
154 Ill.Dec. at 655, 568 N.E.2d at 876. Fellhauer saw the “public policy” rule of Kelsay and Palmateer as designed to protect the public from action by employers that wanted to undermine the statutory norm. Fellhauer also emphasized the importance of giving employers the ability to decide who shall work for them, 154 Ill.Dec. at 656, 568 N.E.2d at 877, a public *191policy of Illinois that the majority’s opinion slights. It is easy for a jury to mistake a pest, a busybody, for a champion of the law. Firms need to prune their work forces of persons who create more trouble than they are worth; time diverted from business means lower efficiency and higher prices for consumers, undermining still another public policy. Employers fearing litigation — with high legal fees and the risk of punitive damages — will keep troublesome and inefficient employees on the payroll. Everyone loses when that happens.
I agree with my colleagues that Za-niecki’s view of Illinois law is questionable to the extent it says that courts never protect workers who make reports within the firm (as opposed to reports to public officials). Several courts stand against Za-niecki on this. Yet what matters today is what Belline reported, not to whom he reported it. What Belline reported is that the manager of one of K-Mart’s stores let a local Rotary Club obtain some merchandise without filling in the proper forms. On one reading this is an offense against the sanctity of K-Mart’s record-keeping system. (Retailers need to know what became of the inventory, and K-Mart also may want to keep tabs on the total volume of charitable gifts. It is unsurprising that K-Mart demoted the manager.) On another reading this is “theft” — because theft is an unconsented taking, and K-Mart allowed managers to donate merchandise to charity only after using the right forms. But no matter which characterization we use, Illinois has no interest in the outcome independent of K-Mart’s. Illinois has not tried to induce retailers to cleave to a particular path on gifts; K-Mart therefore is not using discharge to undermine any policy of Illinois. Whether there was a crime depends entirely on K-Mart’s rule; there is no state policy beyond willingness to enforce K-Mart’s decisions. If Belline was right in thinking the manager’s donation unauthorized, the victim is K-Mart itself. No state case I could find says that Illinois wants to crack down on firms that do not pay adequate attention to their interest in curtailing pilfering by their own employees.
Palmateer is one candidate for that hon- or. Palmateer alleged that he had been fired for agreeing to cooperate in the criminal investigation and prosecution of a fellow employee. Perhaps the fellow worker’s crime was one committed against the firm; the court’s opinion does not say. Palmateer does not establish that the identity of the victim is irrelevant; it did not discuss the question. Justice Heiple concluded in Zaniecki that “Palmateer, a 4-3 decision, [is] the outer limit[ ] of protection for at-will employees discharged in retaliation for the taking of some action favored by public policy.” 97 Ill.Dec. at 758, 493 N.E.2d at 421. In this he has been prophetic. No decision by the Supreme Court of Illinois in the decade since Palmateer sustains a claim that a discharge violated “public policy”. (I put to one side the drumbeat of cases arising out of allegations that the employer discharged someone who pursued a workers’ compensation claim or its cousin, medical attention for an injury, see Hinthorn v. Roland’s of Bloomington, Inc., 119 Ill.2d 526, 116 Ill.Dec. 694, 519 N.E.2d 909 (1988).)
The only other candidate is Petrick v. Monarch Printing Corp., 111 Ill.App.3d 502, 67 Ill.Dec. 352, 444 N.E.2d 588 (1st Dist.1982). Petrick, the comptroller of a small corporation, reported that the firm’s president used some fancy maneuvers to acquire more of the firm’s stock. The court held that the comptroller could not be sacked for making this report. The president’s financial gimmick might be deemed embezzlement, an offense against the firm. It also could be characterized as stock fraud, a crime against the investors rather than the firm itself. Petrick labeled the comptroller’s report one designed “to force Monarch to comply with the Illinois Criminal Code”, implying that it conceived of the president’s (and perhaps the firm’s) offense as one committed against the investors. No one thinks that the manager of the K-Mart outlet committed securities fraud by allowing the Rotary Club to take some merchandise!
Other state cases hew to the line I have sketched. For example, both Shores v. Senior Manor Nursing Center, Inc., 164 Ill.App.3d 503, 115 Ill.Dec. 946, 518 N.E.2d 471 (5th Dist.1988), and Johnson v. World Color Press, Inc., 147 Ill.App.3d 746, 101 *192Ill.Dec. 251, 498 N.E.2d 575 (5th Dist.1986), involve reports of offenses by the employer against some well-defined rule of law designed to constrain the employer. Shores grew out of an internal report that a nurse was violating patients’ rights, Johnson a report that the employer’s accounting practices defrauded its investors. In each case the court thought it necessary to protect employees who tried to vindicate rules of law that the firm was (or might have been) interested in subverting. That is the pattern in the Supreme Court’s cases, too.
Because theft is an unconsented taking, putting the identification of the crime in the hands of the person with authority to give or withhold consent, Belline’s claim fails. No state case uses the Kel-say-Palmateer doctrine to prevent an employer with the power to define the offense from concluding that there has been no crime and discharging a complaining worker. Deployment of the state’s power, through the tort law, is important only if there is some risk that the firm is using a discharge to undermine a legislative decision. Belline’s discharge presents no such risk, and there is accordingly no reason to override the contract between Belline and K-Mart that leaves employment decisions to K-Mart.