Court Opinion

ID: 9677323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:49:18.953901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:55.367120
License: Public Domain

MEMORANDUM ON REHEARING
PER CURIAM.
In its motion for rehearing, Wire Rope advances a new ground upon which the extrinsic evidence of Glenda Grafs false answers on her employment application were entitled to admission into evidence. Rather than impeachment evidence, going to Glenda Grafs credibility, the ground now offered is a substantive one — that, even though Glenda Grafs false employment application answers did not enter into her discharge by Wire Rope, since their falsity had not been discovered at the time of her discharge — still, since Wire Rope would have discharged her because of the falsity of the answers if and when the falsity was discovered, Glenda Graf suffered no remediable injury by her discharge, even though the actual reason for her discharge was the impermissible reason that she was a woman. For this proposition, Wire Rope cites Summers v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 864 F.2d 700 (10th Cir. 1988).
In Summers, the employer after an employee’s discharge (alleged by the employee to have been motivated by his age and his religion) discovered evidence of pervasive misconduct by the employee in his employment. Summers, 864 F.2d at 702-03. This employee misconduct, which would have justified discharge, and which would indeed have caused the employer to discharge the employee, was held to entitle the employer to summary judgment. Id. at 709. In another case cited by Wire Rope, an unpublished memorandum, Collor v. Thermal Science, Inc., E.D.Mo. No. 90-1537(5), evidence submitted in support of employer’s summary judgment motion, uncontradicted by the plaintiff employee, established that employer would have summarily discharged employee upon discovery of falsity of employee application answers.
We did not consider this “after acquired evidence” rule in our decision. The issue whether the after acquired evidence would have caused Wire Rope to discharge Glenda Graf was never an issue in the trial nor on the appeal. It was not raised in Wire Rope’s answer. See Rule 55.08. There was no evidence that the falsity of Glenda Grafs employment application answers, if and when discovered, would have caused Wire Rope to discharge her. We cannot assume that it would have done so. An employer might waive a well-performing employee’s false employment application answers. (Glenda *592Grafs false answers on her employment application is different from the pervasive and continuing employee misconduct involved in Summers.) The issue was not submitted to the jury; Wire Rope offered no instruction on the issue. It was not addressed either in Glenda Grafs or Wire Rope’s brief here. New issues raised in motions for rehearing are not considered. Irwin v. Globe-Democrat Publishing Co., 368 S.W.2d 452, 458 (Mo.1963); Allen v. Globe-Democrat Publishing Co., 368 S.W.2d 460, 467 (Mo.1963); State v. Oliver, 520 S.W.2d 99, 101 (Mo.App. 1975).
The record in another trial may present the after-acquired evidence issue raised by Wire Rope’s motion for rehearing. The record in the present case does not.
The motion for rehearing is denied.