Court Opinion

ID: 9748632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:08:29.743999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:37.832780
License: Public Domain

CAVANAUGH, J.,
Concurring and Dissenting.
¶ 1 It is firmly established that Pennsylvania is an at-will employment jurisdiction. McLaughlin v. Gastrointestinal Specialists, Inc., 750 A.2d 283 (Pa.2000). This doctrine is an offspring of the ancient law of master and servant. The servant is required to perform his duties at the discretion of the employer and the law. will not involve itself with disputes concerning the terms and conditions of the employment relationship. The master-servant (employer-employee) relationship is, of course, a mutual bargain. The employer may at any time discharge the employee, and, contrariwise, the employee may at any time leave his employment (indentured servitude and involuntary servitude having happily passed into America’s past).
¶ 2 The law has recognized in many instances the inequity of the master-servant bargain and has provided remedies to the employee who has been wrongfully terminated and even in some cases to the employee who, while retained, has been ill-treated. Examples abound and include, for example, the right to bargain collectively, Labor Management Relations Acts, Wage and Hours Acts, minimum wage laws, anti-discrimination laws, and equal employment rights laws. These rights, too numerous to catalog, include wrongful discharge lawsuits. It is the contract of employment doctrine and its adjunct, the employee handbook, which often form the basis of wrongful discharge lawsuits. However, by definition, such suits have been limited to those who suffer loss of their employment.
¶ 3 To one still in an employment relationship, the claim simply becomes one of the terms and conditions of employment which is not justicially cognizable absent a statutory or judicially created form of relief. Appellant herein has not been discharged from employment and he furnishes no precedent for the concept of constructive termination which would entitle an employee to the possible rights of one who has been terminated. To the extent, however, that one in appellant’s status is entitled to claim the rights of a terminated employee, I disagree with the majority.
¶ 4 An employee may be discharged with or without cause, and our law does not prohibit firing an employee for relying on an employer’s promise. Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, 524 Pa. 90, 93-95, 569 A.2d 346, 348 (1990). Nor does our law recognize a cause of action for rebanee upon a representation in an employee handbook that is not part of a bargained for condition of employment. For this reason, I dissent from the portion of the majority disposition finding that a cause of action in con*1273tract for quantum meruit exists based upon the terms of the employee handbook.
¶ 5 An employer’s unilateral act of publishing its polices does not constitute the requisite “meeting of the minds” required for a contract. Where the terms of an employee handbook are not bargained for by the parties, any benefits conferred by it are mere gratuities. Richardson v. Charles Cole Memorial Hospital, 320 Pa.Super. 106, 466 A.2d 1084 (1983) (cited with approval in Morosetti v. Louisiana Land and Exploration Co., 522 Pa. 492, 495-97, 564 A.2d 151, 153 (1989)). Unless an employer communicates a policy as part of a definite offer of employment, it is free to alter the policy as it sees fit. Id.
¶ 6 Attempts by this court to carve out exceptions to an employer’s ability to disregard a non-bargained for promise as part of a verbal communication or as part of an employee handbook have been met with uniform disapproval by the supreme court. In Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, 375 Pa.Super. 1, 543 A.2d 1148 (1988), a divided en banc panel of the superior court applied the doctrine of equitable estoppel to allow a discharged employee to maintain a common law action based upon his reliance upon a verbal misrepresentation of the employer. The supreme court reversed and held that the doctrine of equitable estoppel is not an exception to the employment at-will doctrine. Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, 524 Pa. 90, 93-95, 569 A.2d 346, 348 (1990).
¶ 7 Several years later, in Niehaus v. Delaware Valley Medical Center, 429 Pa.Super. 119, 631 A.2d 1314 (1993), this court ruled in a divided three-member panel decision that an employee could sue a former employer for breach of contract where an employee handbook provided for rehire under the circumstances present. The complaint alleged that the employee had sought approval for a leave of absence under the terms of the handbook, that the approval was given, and that the employer then refused to rehire, despite a contrary provision in the handbook. The panel of this court found that a cause of action for breach of. contract could be maintained since the employer had guaranteed rehire in the employee handbook and that it was “essential to avoid injustice” to enforce the promise. Id. at 1318. This holding was summarily reversed by the supreme court upon citation to its decision in Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, supra. Delaware Valley Medical Center v. Niehaus, 538 Pa. 481, 649 A.2d 433 (1994).
¶ 8 The law is clear that no cause of action, whether styled as one at law sounding in contract or as one in equity upon estoppel principles, may be maintained by an employee for enforcement of the provisions of an employee handbook where that handbook was not a bargained for portion of the offer of employment. Here, the handbook was not an element of the offer of employment since its effective date was May 1, 1998, and appellant was hired in April, 1997. The amended complaint contains no averments which would constitute additional consideration sufficient to bind the employer to the provisions of the handbook.
¶ 9 I would hold that the rejection of this court’s decision in Niehaus by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court renders the majority’s disposition to reinstate the breach of contract count of the complaint erroneous under existing law. See also McLaughlin v. Gastrointestinal Specialists, Inc., 561 Pa. 307, 750 A.2d 283, 290 (2000) (supreme court has steadfastly resisted any attempt to weaken the presumption of at-will employment in this Commonwealth). I, therefore, would affirm the order granting the preliminary objections in the nature of a demurrer.2
*1274¶ 10 I agree with the majority that the amended complaint fails to state a cause of action under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq.
¶ 11 For the forgoing reasons, I dissent in part and concur in part with the result reached by the majority.

. Any relief available to appellant would be through the Wage Payment and Collection Law, 43 P.S. § 260.1 et seq. (WPCL), which provides a statutory remedy for denial of wages and fringe benefits to which appellant contends he is entitled. See McLaughlin v. Gastrointestinal Specialists, Inc., 696 A.2d 173, 176 (Pa.Super. 1997), affirmed on other grounds, 561 Pa. 307, 750 A.2d 283 (2000).