Court Opinion

ID: 9687282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:22:13.432163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:25.438036
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, CHIEF JUSTICE
¶ 32. (concurring). The lengthy majority opinion boils down to adopting this rule of law: When an employer deliberately and intentionally lies to an at-will employee to induce the employee to continue employment and the employee continues to work relying on those lies, and then sustains damages as a result of reliance on the lies, the employee cannot sue in a tort action for damages. I cannot join this opinion.
¶ 33. Wisconsin's general rule of law is that everyone is liable for damages for intentional misrepresentation.1 The majority opinion carves out an exception to this general rule and states that employers are not liable to at-will employees for damages for intentional misrepresentation. It's one thing to say that the elements of the tort of intentional misrepresentation have not been met in the present case. I therefore concur. It's entirely another thing to say, as the majority opinion does in the present case, that the tort of intentional misrepresentation never applies in an employment-at-will relationship.2
*728¶ 34. I join ¶ 25 of the opinion in which the majority opinion recognizes an employee-at-will's cause of action under the doctrine of promissory estop-pel. It is the lack of a contract in at-will employment that allows claims for promissory estoppel.3
¶ 35. For the reasons set forth, I write separately.
¶ 36. I am authorized to state that Justice WILLIAM A. BABLITCH joins this concurrence.

 The elements of the tort of intentional misrepresentation are: the defendant made a representation of fact; the representation of fact was untrue; the untrue representation was made by the defendant knowing the representation was untrue or recklessly without caring whether it was true or false; the defendant made the representation with intent to deceive and induce the plaintiff to act upon it to the plaintiffs pecuniary damage; and the plaintiff believed such representation to be true and relied on it. See Wis JI — Civil 2401.

 The majority overlooks persuasive authority from numerous jurisdictions that have allowed this cause of action in the *728employment-at-will context. See, e.g., Frank J. Cavico, Fraudulent, Negligent, and Innocent Misrepresentation in the Employment Context: The Deceitful, Careless, and Thoughtless Employer, 20 Campbell L. Rev. 1,4-5 (1997) (providing an overview of the case law on employer misrepresentation, including several cases in the at-will employment context).

Other theories of recovery exist. See, e.g., ¶24 of the majority opinion; Brodsky v. Hercules, Inc., 966 F.Supp. 1337, 1351 (D. Del. 1997) (a cause of action for breach of an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing exists when the employer misrepresents some important fact, most often the employers' present intention, and the employee relies thereon either to accept a new position or remain in a present one).