Court Opinion

ID: 9630509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:12:34.978726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:39.364243
License: Public Domain

LENT, J.,
dissenting.
As the majority observes, the parties agree that the terms of the Employee Handbook are contractual terms of the plaintiffs’ employment. That contract enjoins the employer from discharging the employee unless there is “just cause” for discharge. The majority concludes that the absence of the actual occurrence of just cause is irrelevant as long as: (1) there is some evidence of the existence of facts constituting just cause, and (2) the employer believes that evidence and acts in good faith. The majority holds that whether facts constituting just cause actually exist need not be established because the employer never contracted away its common law right to decide unilaterally whether those facts exist.
Ordinarily, if a contract gives one party a right to act with respect to the interests of the other party upon the happening of an event or fulfillment of a condition, the happening or fulfillment is a necessary predicate to exercise of the right. That the party who acts does so because there is evidence which leads that party mistakenly, albeit in good faith, to believe that the event or condition has happened is not good enough. The party injured by the action will find redress in the courts for injury resulting *102from the action, and the other party will not be heard to say that it is irrelevant whether the event or condition actually happened.
Suppose that the Employee Handbook provided that an employee could be discharged for tardiness only if the employee were tardy more than ten times in a quarter year. Because of an honest error in keeping time records, the timekeeper informs the employer that a certain employee has been tardy eleven times in the first two months of the quarter. The employer, or managing employee with the power to fire, examines the evidence produced by the timekeeper, believes it and acts upon it in good faith by firing the putative latecomer. I cannot believe that as a matter of law it is irrelevant that the fired employee was in fact never tardy, and the employer’s belief to the contrary was induced by the timekeeper’s mistake. As I understand the majority opinion, however, because the contracting employer did not agree to give up its common law right to decide whether the employee was tardy the requisite number of times, the fired employee would have no redress.
Because I believe this to be a dangerous departure from the rules of contract law, I dissent.
Linde, J., joins in this dissent.