Court Opinion

ID: 9535132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:45:54.221832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:10.602656
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE BARRY, dissenting: In affirming the circuit court’s dismissal of the plaintiff’s complaint, the majority holds that the plaintiff Cook has failed to exhaust all out-of-court remedies available to him and is consequently precluded from maintaining a cause of action in tort against Caterpillar. I strongly disagree with both the analysis and the conclusion of the majority, and for this reason respectfully dissent. Exhaustion of out-of-court remedies by a discharged employee is not a necessary condition precedent to the filing of a cause of action in tort against an employer for retaliatory discharge. Exhaustion of the remedies provided in a collective-bargaining agreement is a logical and sensible prerequisite to the maintenance of a cause of action when that cause is based upon a violation of the terms of the agreement itself. Therefore, “[i]t is generally held that an action for wrongful discharge may not be maintained where the right of action is derived from a collective bargaining agreement, unless the plaintiff has first exhausted the grievance procedures established by such agreement.” (Annot., 72 A.L.R.2d 1439, 1441 (1960).) However, in his complaint the plaintiff is not alleging that the discharge was wrongful in the sense that the terms of the collective bargaining agreement were violated. (Compare Anson v. Hiram Walker & Sons (7th Cir. 1955), 222 F.2d 100; Payne v. Pullman Co. (1957), 13 Ill. App. 2d 105, 141 N.E.2d 83.) Rather, the plaintiff is seeking damages for his retaliatory discharge based upon his pursuing a workmen’s compensation claim. The plaintiff’s cause of action sounds not in contract, but in tort. It is based not upon violation of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, but upon a violation of the public policy of the State of Illinois to compensate employees for work-related injury. (See Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc. (1978), 74 Ill. 2d 172, 384 N.E.2d 353.) The plaintiff’s cause of action exists independent of the collective bargaining agreement. The right of the plaintiff to maintain a cause of action in tort for retaliatory discharge should not, therefore, be dependent upon the exhaustion of remedies provided in a collective bargaining agreement which is not at the core of the controversy. In addition, contrary to the conclusion of the majority, a grievance procedure such as the one provided in the collective bargaining agreement in the case at bar by its very terms does not supply means of redress for an employee subjected to a Kelsay type of retaliatory discharge. Article 5.1 of the collective bargaining agreement provided as follows: “Grievance Procedure (5.1) A grievance is defined to be any difference which may arise between the parties, or between the Company and an employee covered by this Agreement as to: a. Any matter relating to wages (except general wage adjustments) and including but not limited to merit increases, incorrect classification within a given occupation, or incorrect classification as to occupation, hours of work or working conditions, not covered by this Agreement; and b. Any matter involving the interpretation, application or violation of any provisions of this Agreement, appended letters of agreement or appropriate local agreement.” The plaintiff’s cause of action is not, by definition, a grievance under the collective bargaining agreement. It does not involve wages, nor does it even broadly speaking involve the “interpretation, application, or violation of any provisions of [the collective bargaining] Agreement, * a # » what it does involve is an examination into the employer’s motivation for the discharge of an employee. To compel an employee to exhaust all of the grievance procedures provided by a collective bargaining agreement when those procedures cannot possibly afford him a remedy is to subject the employee to engage in a truly futile act. The only forum in which the employee’s claim that he was the subject of a retaliatory discharge violative of public policy can be heard is a court of law. A discharged employee alleging retaliatory discharge need not exhaust out-of-court grievance procedures provided by a contract or collective bargaining agreement, which he must do to maintain an action for wrongful discharge based upon a contract theory, in order to maintain a cause of action against the employer in tort. Even if I were to agree with the majority that exhaustion of all out-of-court remedies was a condition precedent to the maintenance of a cause of action for retaliatory discharge, I would be constrained to reverse the order of the circuit court dismissing the plaintiff’s complaint because all available out-of-court remedies were in fact exhausted by the plaintiff. The majority finds that the plaintiff has failed to exhaust all of his nonlegal remedies because he failed to raise the issue of retaliatory discharge during the grievance procedure. In reaching such a conclusion, my colleagues assume that the question of retaliatory discharge could have been presented before the labor arbitrator. Such an assumption is manifestly erroneous. First, as I have previously pointed out, the grievance procedure provided by the collective bargaining agreement did not present a proper forum in which to present an allegation of retaliatory discharge. Under the very terms of the agreement, an allegation by Cook of retaliatory discharge could not have been heard (as it did not fall within the definition of “grievance” provided in article 5.1), and even if Cook had made such an allegation, it would have been irrelevant to the determination of the narrow issue before the labor arbitrator, i.e., was there “just cause” for Cook’s dismissal based upon his absences taken without proper notification? Secondly, and perhaps of more consequence, the plaintiff’s grievance was submitted to arbitration prior to our supreme court’s decision in Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc. (1978), 74 Ill. 2d 172, 384 N.E.2d 353. I do not comprehend how this plaintiff is to be expected to include in his grievance as grounds for redress a tortious action by the company when that action had not then been recognized by the Illinois Supreme Court to be against public policy and unlawful. Many burdens have been placed upon plaintiffs in civil cases, but never before has a plaintiff been given the burden of predicting what the law should be. Access to the courts of this State should not be based upon the ability of a litigant to satisfy such an irrational requirement. The majority’s decision deprives the plaintiff .of his day in court and works a gross injustice. In Kelsay, the Illinois Supreme Court provided a remedy in tort for all employees who are subjected to a retaliatory discharge. The retaliatory discharge in that case took the form of a firing in response to the filing of a workmen’s compensation claim. The fact that such conduct is highly reprehensible and repugnant to the public policy of this State is reflected in the prospective availability of punitive damages to discharged plaintiffs. In the case at bar, the plaintiff alleges in his complaint that he was the victim of such a retaliatory discharge. Instead of providing an opportunity for the plaintiff to prove these allegations in open court, however, the majority today constructs a highly tenuous barrier to the circuit court by erroneously asserting that the plaintiff’s claim sounds in contract and could have been dealt with in the grievance procedure provided in the collective bargaining agreement. Such a conclusion is fallacious. The result reached in this case and in Palmateer v. International Harvester (1980), 85 Ill. App. 3d 50,_N.E.2d__ reflects a conservatism in matters of employer-employee relations which I find disturbing, and assures to employers that the tort of retaliatory discharge, although recognized by our supreme court, is virtually nonexistent in the Third District.