Court Opinion

ID: 9701722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:34:08.606947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:27.883987
License: Public Domain

*297Dissenting opinion.
Thaxter, J.,
Dissenting. The only issue which I originally thought was in this case was whether the plaintiff was properly dismissed by the Guy Gannett Publishing Company for cause. Judge Murray’s dissenting opinion has convinced me that I was wrong. No such simple solution exists. The question is whether the plaintiff became entitled to severance pay provided in Article VII, Section 4, of his contract of employment in spite of the fact that he was dismissed for cause.
Upon written application to the publisher to terminate his employment, he became entitled to severance pay after he had completed twenty years of service. There is no other qualification. That right could not be taken from him, as was done here, even though he may have misbehaved after his right to severance pay accrued by his having worked for twenty years.
This is a contract which is binding on the employer as well as on the employee. The employee did not lose all his rights which had accrued under it because he may have misbehaved after such rights had accrued.
In interpreting these labor contracts it is essential that we construe them strictly as written, not as we may think they should have been written, and certainly not by interpolating words in them which are not there.
I concur in the dissenting opinion of Judge Murray.