Court Opinion

ID: 9714194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:32:40.973359+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:24.175720
License: Public Domain

V. J. Brennan, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully *537dissent as I feel plaintiff did have a cause of action.
In most patronage jobs, the employee serves at the whim of the appointing authority. Accordingly, the occupants of such jobs usually change with the change of administrations. Here, however, plaintiff was in the employ of the road commission for approximately 15 years. There was testimony that other employees who served in appointed positions had never been discharged. In fact, there existed within this department an unwritten rule that employment would continue as long as an employee’s work was satisfactory.
The record shows the following: plaintiffs work was more than satisfactory, no grievances had ever been filed against plaintiff; and not only was plaintiffs contract automatically renewed each year but there existed an implied agreement for continuous employment. The record further shows that plaintiff was summarily discharged, no notice of termination and no reasons for termination were given.
The majority states that although the. equities are on plaintiffs side, plaintiff proved too much by showing that the contract was for life and therefore could be terminated "for a good reason, bad reason or no reason at all”. The majority points out that if plaintiff had a property interest in his employment, defendant would have been required to provide him certain due process procedural protections before summarily discharging him. Casad v City of Jackson, 79 Mich App 573; 263 NW2d 19 (1977), and Perry v Sindermann, 408 US 593; 92 S Ct 2694; 33 L Ed 2d 570 (1972).
From the facts which were presented here I would find that, as in Perry v Sindermann, plaintiff had a property interest in his public employ*538ment. I would term this property interest, for want of a better term, de facto tenure, which arose due to the road commission’s long-established practice of retaining all employees whose work was satisfactory, regardless of any changes of administration which occurred. As the record shows, this practice lulled all the employees into a sense of security. All things considered, there clearly existed in all these employees’ minds a right to assume that they had a right to their job, and that right accorded them certain procedural protections.
Since plaintiff was not afforded these protections, I believe he had a cause of action and the trial court was not in error in submitting this issue to the jury.
I would affirm.