Court Opinion

ID: 9527771
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:34:03.826685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:11.575255
License: Public Domain

Herd, J.,
concurring: I concur in the result reached by the majority but I think we should expressly adopt Restatement *519(Second) of Contracts § 205 (1979), which imposes a duty of good faith and fair dealing in the performance and enforcement of every contract including employment-at-will contracts. Employment contracts are the most sensitive of all contracts. They determine the standard of living and the quality of education for children, and affect the general welfare of all the people in this country. It is ludicrous that the covenant of good faith and fair dealing has been adopted pertaining to commercial transactions (see K.S.A. 84-1-203) but has not been adopted for transactions involving human working conditions.
The doctrine of employment-at-will and termination without cause is a carry-over from 19th Century laissez faire economic philosophy as expressed by Herbert Spencer in his works on economic Darwinism (survival of the fittest). After Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 49 L. Ed. 937, 25 S. Ct. 539 (1905), we recognized that the individual laborer and management did not occupy equal bargaining positions. As a result, wage payment, prevailing wage, collective bargaining, workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, full employment, and many other laws were enacted making all labor contracts subject to them. Thus, we see the doctrine of employment-at-will and termination without cause is not absolute. Termination from such contracts for reasons of race, religion, and alienage violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We also recognize that discharge of a worker from an employment-at-will contract in retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim violates public policy and is therefore unlawful. Murphy v. City of Topeka, 6 Kan. App. 2d 488, 630 P.2d 186 (1981). All the foregoing exceptions to the termination-at-will doctrine are bad faith discharges since they had nothing to do with the worker’s job performance or the employer’s employment needs. Such is also the case here. Coleman acquiesced in the actions of its supervisory employees in discharging appellants in retaliation for their off-duty conduct — conduct which apparently deviated from one supervisor’s private code of morality. For the law to permit such vindictive retaliation is improper and has broad ramifications. Such terminations are in bad faith and violate the covenant of fair dealing. I respectfully submit we should adopt Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 205 (1979), making a duty *520of good faith and fair dealing applicable in the performance and enforcement of all contracts.