Court Opinion

ID: 9772277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:12:58.384366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:43.272654
License: Public Domain

GONZALEZ, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment. However, I cannot join the Court’s opinion because its tenor may signal a retreat from the well established policy that recognizes that the employment-at-will doctrine is a judicially created one that this Court is free to amend. Sabine Pilot Serv., Inc. v. Hauck, 687 S.W.2d 733, 735 (Tex.1985). While the Court is correct that in Winters v. Houston Chronicle Publishing Co., 795 S.W.2d 723, 724-25 (Tex.1990), we declined to further modify the employment-at-will doctrine by permitting a suit for retaliation for employees who report illegal activities, today’s opinion omits the fact that we only declined to do so “at this time on these facts.” Id. at 725. I write separately to reiterate that when dealing with employment at will, it is still within our realm to “craft a narrow exception that protects the interests of responsible, law-abiding employers while holding accountable those whose activities threaten the public interest.” Id. at 726 (Doggett, J., concurring).
*404I agree that the facts of Lynda Gail Austin’s discharge, like in Winters, do not provide the appropriate situation for us to broaden the exceptions to at-will employment. Since Austin’s firing, the Legislature has enacted a whistleblower statute that provides a remedy to any hospital employee who has been discharged for reporting illegal activity to his or her employer. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 161.134 (Vernon Supp. 1998). Even though Austin was unable to benefit from this enactment, she was not without a remedy. In fact, as the Court points out, under a statute that went into effect in 1987, Austin, as a registered nurse, was required by law to report another registered nurse that she suspected had exposed or was “likely to expose a patient or other person unnecessarily to a risk of harm,” or who “is or is likely to be impaired by chemical dependency_” Tex.Rev.Civ. Stat. art. 4525a, § 1(a) (Vernon Supp.1998). While the record does not reflect whether Austin reported her suspicions to the Board of Nurse Examiners as required, there is no doubt she would have then had a civil cause of action if she was suspended, terminated, or otherwise disciplined or discriminated against. Id. § 11(a).1 Accordingly, this is not a compelling scenario of injustice that requires us to modify the long-standing employment-at-will doctrine.
However, such a compelling situation may present itself in the future, and when it does, it will be incumbent on this Court to once again, as we did in Sabine Pilot, carry its “burden and the duty of amending [the doctrine] to reflect social and economic changes.” Sabine Pilot, 687 S.W.2d at 735 (Kilgarlin, J., concurring).

. At oral argument, a point of contention was whether the anti-retaliatory provision of the Professional Nurse Reporting statute was in effect when Austin filed her suit. It was, as § 11 was enacted in 1987. Act of June 18, 1987, 70 th Leg., R.S., ch. 570, § 2, 1987 Tex. Gen. Laws 2265, 2268. The only amendment of any kind to § 11 was a 1993 change in which "1A” was added to a list of sections referenced in § 11(c). Act of June 19, 1993, 73 rd Leg., R.S., ch. 840, § 2, 1993 Tex. Gen. Laws 3305.