Court Opinion

ID: 9727656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:46:15.470055+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:02.443637
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, J., Concurring.
I concur in the result but I feel constrained to observe that this case is a graphic example of the pernicious trap into which the courts have fallen by attempting to create an implied-in-fact contract of employment and a cause of action for its breach in situations of patently at-will contracts of employment. The majority here now finds itself constrained to pass judgment on the wisdom of the employer’s decision. The decision is correct but should not have been necessary.
An employer’s adoption of personnel policies and guidelines, coupled with lengthy service by a employee, does not create a contract by which the employee can circumscribe the employer’s decisionmaking ability in the area of retention and discharge.
I would dispose of this case by simply saying that in the absence of a binding written contract of employment, May Department Stores had the absolute power to terminate this employee so long as its decision was not motivated by racial or sexual bias or any other consideration which would violate statutory law.
No claim of such illegality is made here. Plaintiff simply says that her termination was not “fair.” She characterizes her negligence as minor and not violative of company policy, and she complains that other employees were not similarly disciplined.
Thus, she has led this court into an evaluation of May Department Stores’ “fairness” and the existence of good cause by considering such mundane factors as the amount of the loss versus the degree of negligence involved and whether appropriate punishment was meted out to similarly situated employees.
In my opinion, the decisions in Wilkerson v. Wells Fargo Bank (1989) 212 Cal.App.3d 1217 [261 Cal.Rptr. 185] and Wood v. Loyola Marymount University (1990) 218 Cal.App.3d 661 [267 Cal.Rptr. 230] were wrongly *842decided in that they would substitute a lay jury’s determination for that of the employer in determining what would “justify” immediate termination.
The very problem which I foresaw when I dissented in Wood v. Loyola Marymount University has emerged in this case. If this field of litigation is not drastically curtailed by the Supreme Court’s rethinking of its language in Foley, which made the first step into this morass and opened the way for some Courts of Appeal to plunge further and further therein, we can look forward to the creation of a number of new courts devoted solely to deciding employee discharge cases and thus functioning like a civil service commission for the private sector.
Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied October 11, 1990. Mosk, J., and Broussard, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.