Court Opinion

ID: 9532623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:23:18.589942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:47.968822
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that if Brant was an independent contractor and was discharged on grounds other than violation of the contract he has a claim for compensatory damages arising from the failure of Morgan to give him ten days' written notice as required by the agreement. I also agree that the punitive damage instruction did not adequately state the law.
However, I respectfully dissent to the majority's expansive reading of the decision in Frampton v. Central Ind. Gas Co. (1973), 260 Ind. 249, 297 N.E.2d 425. As this court observed in Martin v. Platt (1979), 179 Ind.App. 688, 386 N.E.2d 1026, Frampton involved a discharge of an employee for exercising his rights to workmen's compensation benefits in violation of a statutory prohibition against employers using any "device" to avoid their obligations under the act. 386 N.E.2d at 1028; 297 N.E.2d at 427-28.
The majority herein has chosen to alter the prohibition against discharging an at-will employee from cases where a statute prohibits discharge for the ground in question, to cases where the employee was merely exercising a right which a statute permitted or conferred.
While Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers, Inc. v. Woods (1982), Ind.App., 440 N.E.2d 696, 697 and Frampton, supra, 297 N.E.2d at 429, contain language to that effect, neither case so held.
I do not for a moment dispute the moral and ethical impropriety of "retaliatory discharge." But we assert that individual freedom is both desirable and important; and that must concomitantly entail individual responsibility. At this juncture, the law of Indiana recognizes the validity of employment-at-will contracts. Under such a contract Morgan was free to terminate Brant for any reason or no reason, except as prohibited by some valid statute.
If that should not be the law then it is the validity of the at-will employment relationship that should be changed.
I dissent for these reasons and those stated in our prior decision in Martin v. Platt, supra.