Court Opinion

ID: 9550730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:41:19.673325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:16.103650
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice:
(concurring and dissenting).
I concur with the majority’s holding that discharges in contravention of public policy are actionable under. Utah law and that firing one for a refusal to violate state tax and federal customs laws, if that is what occurred here, would amount to such an actionable discharge. However, I cannot join without several reservations Justice Durham’s explanation of what may constitute public policy for the purposes of this cause of action. I also dissent from the majority’s holding that discharge in the violation-of-public-policy cause of action lies in tort rather than contract.
I do not intend to disparage the ends sought by the majority: to provide compensation for employees discharged in violation of public policy and to deter employers from such firings. If the public policy of this state is fixed firmly against conduct an employer requires of an employee upon pain of discharge for breach of contract, the law should sanction neither the contract provision nor the discharge. However, while I agree with the majority’s end, I cannot agree with the means chosen to achieve it.
The court today adopts a rather formless tort cause of action as a means to separate from the general body of contractual relations between employer and employee those areas where public policy will not permit contract law to operate. To me, this is akin to using a cleaver to remove a brain tumor. The tool is capable of excising the offending part, but it poses a considerable risk of unpredictable collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue and a consequent impairment of the entire organ.
The threat of this unintended injury is particularly unfortunate because it is unnecessary. Recasting discharge in violation of public policy as a contract instead of a tort cause of action would accomplish all the positive consequences the majority desires — compensation of injured' employees and deterrence of employer misconduct— without the risk of negative effects the majority surely cannot intend but nonetheless invites. Indeed, returning to my earlier analogy, while the tort action is a cleaver, the contract action is a scalpel. I favor the scalpel, with the knowledge that the larger knife of tort will always be available in cases where an egregiously injured employee can prove an independent tort, such as intentional infliction of emotional distress. When selecting from available tools to craft new rules that will affect the relationship between every Utah employer and every Utah employee, we should proceed with special delicacy lest we demonstrate that the fashioning of these rules is a task too subtle for our skills and one better performed by others.1
Before discussing the merits, a brief overview of the discharge-in-violation-of-public-policy area is appropriate. The watershed Utah employment-at-will decision is Berube v. Fashion Centre, Ltd,., 771 P.2d 1033 (Utah 1989). In Berube, we held that the employment-at-will doctrine in Utah amounts only to a rebuttable presumption that the contractual relationship between the parties contemplates that the employer may discharge the employee at any time. Id. at 1044 (opinion of Durham, J., joined by Stewart, J.); id. at 1051 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result); id. at 1050 (Howe, J., concurring, joined by Hall, C.J.). The lead opinion in Berube, written by Justice Durham and joined only by Justice Stewart, assayed the three categories of so-called “exceptions” to the employment-at-will doctrine that courts around the country have fashioned. We adopted only the “implied-in-fact” exception. Id. at 1049 *1287(opinion of Durham, J., joined by Stewart, J.); id. at 1052-53 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result); id. at 1050 (Howe, J., concurring, joined by Hall, C.J.). Since then, we have decided a number of cases under that exception, attempting to flesh out some of its contours. See, e.g., Arnold v. B.J. Titan Servs. Co., 783 P.2d 541 (Utah 1989); Lowe v. Sorensen Research Co., 779 P.2d 668 (Utah 1989); Caldwell v. Ford, Bacon & Davis Utah, Inc., 777 P.2d 483 (Utah 1989).
In addition to the implied-in-fact exception applied in Berube and its progeny, a majority of the Berube court indicated in dictum that it would also recognize a “public policy” exception to the employment-at-will doctrine, although a majority of the members of the court did not agree on the precise scope of that exception. Compare Berube, 771 P.2d at 1042-43 (Durham, J., joined by Stewart, J.) with 111 P.2d at 1051 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result).
Two years after Berube, we again had the opportunity to determine the contours of the public policy exception. See Hodges v. Gibson Products Co., 811 P.2d 151 (Utah 1991). However, a majority of the court again did not address the question. In Hodges, the jury based its verdict for the plaintiff alternatively on a finding of malicious prosecution and a finding of wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. Justice Stewart, writing the lead opinion and joined only by Justice Durham, discussed in dictum some aspects of the public policy exception to the at-will presumption, including the sources of relevant public policy. His views followed generally those Justice Durham expressed in Berube. Id. at 165-66. However, a majority of the court joined only the portion of the lead opinion that affirmed the malicious prosecution verdict, finding that ground sufficient to support the judgment without recourse to the theory of discharge in violation of public policy. Id. at 168 (Howe, J., concurring), at 168 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result, joined by Hall, C.J.).
The case before us today requires that we finally decide several issues regarding the public policy limitation on discharge.2 First, we must determine whether the sources of the relevant actionable public policies encompass those relied on by plaintiff. Second, we must fix the character of the cause of action. I generally agree with Justice Durham’s treatment of the sources issue and will dispense quickly with my suggestions for a more exact and helpful definition. I will then address her characterization of the action as a tort, a course with which I profoundly disagree, and elaborate on my arguments for the equally effective, less hazardous, and more precise remedy of contract.
The first issue Justice Durham discusses is the source of the relevant public policies for the “public policy” limitation on discharge. Although she declines to attempt “to define the full scope of the term ‘public policy,’ ” she does state that “declarations of public policy can be found in our statutes and constitutions.” Acknowledging that we have said that the public policy limitation on discharge should be construed narrowly, her opinion holds that the requisite public policy is present when “the statutory language expressing the public conscience is clear and when the interests of society which are at stake are substantial.” She concludes that falsifying tax and customs documents would amount to a viola*1288tion of a “clear” and “substantial!’ public policy.
I agree with Justice Durham’s requirement that any public policy that limits discharge for breach of the employment contract must be clear and substantial. I also agree that Peterson may have alleged such a policy here. However, for the guidance of the bench and bar in future eases, I would expand on what “substantial” means, and I would explain why we conclude that the policies here meet that test.
Both the cases Justice Durham cites and many others she does not cite state in rather conclusory terms, mirrored in Justice Durham’s opinion, that for a violation of public policy to be actionable, that policy must be “substantial” or “fundamental.” For analytic purposes, I find that the following statement of the California Supreme Court in Foley v. Interactive Data Corp., 47 Cal.3d 654, 254 Cal.Rptr. 211, 765 P.2d 373 (1988), gives some texture to the elusive concept of “substantiality”:
Even where, as here, a statutory touchstone has been asserted, we must still inquire whether the discharge is against public policy and affects a duty which inures to the benefit of the public at large rather than to a particular employer or employee. For example, many statutes simply regulate conduct between private individuals, or impose requirements whose fulfillment does not implicate fundamental public policy concerns. Regardless of whether the existence of a statutory or constitutional link is required under Tameny [v. Atlantic Richfield, Co., 27 Cal.3d 167, 610 P.2d 1330, 164 Cal.Rptr. 839 (1980) ], disparagement of a basic public policy must be alleged. ...
47 Cal.3d at 669, 254 Cal.Rptr. at 217, 765 P.2d at 379 (emphasis in original).
In other words, one must ask: Is the policy in question one that is of sufficient importance to the public, as opposed to the parties only, that it should constitute an uncompromising bar to discharge? Is it a policy that a court would not permit the parties to derogate by express contract? These are the effects of making a policy one that qualifies for the public policy limitation on discharge, and therefore, these are the factors that should determine the substantiality of any policy violated by a discharge. See Foley, 47 Cal.3d at 670 n. 12, 254 Cal.Rptr. at 218 n. 12, 765 P.2d at 380 n. 12.
Following the Foley mode of analysis, I conclude that we would not permit an employer to contract expressly with an employee to falsify state tax documentation or evade customs restrictions. Deliberate falsification of information to avoid taxes strikes at the core of the public revenue-raising function and offends our basic public policy notions of fairness in taxation— that all persons similarly situated with respect to the tax laws should pay their share. It is a clear violation of Utah law to falsify a tax return or supporting records. Utah Code Ann. § 76-8-1101(l)(b) (1990). I therefore have no trouble finding that a violation of Missouri’s analogous tax law would offend a substantial Utah public policy. See Mo.Rev.Stat. § 150.260 (1986). Similarly, it is a clear violation of federal law to evade customs restrictions through false statements. 18 U.S.C. § 542 (1988). I am therefore equally comfortable with the majority’s holding that an evasion of federal customs laws would also violate a substantial Utah public policy.
Having dispensed with my clarification of the sources of actionable public policies, I turn to my major and fundamental point of disagreement with Justice Durham’s opinion. The certified question asks us to decide whether the cause of action for offending the public policy limitation on discharge should sound in tort or in contract. She opts for tort. I would opt for contract. She favors tort because it invokes the spec-tre of punitive damages to deter employers from discharges in contravention of public policy. I see contract damages as sufficient to make an employee whole in the ordinary case, but would permit the discharged employee to seek any of the traditional tort remedies if he or she could prove an independent tort. This two-layered course of recovery would preserve the deterrent effects of tort while limiting its *1289potential for unintended harm. It would guarantee contract damages to all employees discharged in violation of public policy, regardless of the mental state of their employers, something a tort cause of action cannot provide. For those discharged employees who can prove an independent, intentional tort, such as infliction of emotional distress, this two-layered remedy would protect their access to tort damages, including punitives if warranted. We thought this two-layered remedy sufficient to compensate and to deter the injured and the injurer, respectively, in Beck v. Farmers Insurance Exchange, 701 P.2d 795, 800 & n. 3 (Utah 1985). See also Hodges v. Gibson Prods. Co., 811 P.2d 151, 163-64 (Utah 1991) (opinion of Stewart, J., joined by Durham, J.); id. at 168 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result); Berube v. Fashion Centre, Ltd., 771 P.2d at 1033, 1046 (opinion of Durham, J., joined by Stewart, J.); id. at 1051 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result). Absent a showing that this two-layered approach has proven inadequate, I would apply it here.
I now address in order Justice Durham’s several arguments for adopting the tort approach. First, she observes that a majority of courts have taken the tort route. I see little persuasive weight in the bandwagon argument. In fact, we rejected it in Beck. There, we adopted a contract approach to the problem of an insurer’s not fulfilling the nonwaivable public policy obligation that we read into a first-party insurance contract. In so doing, we recognized that the majority of courts considering the issue had couched the cause of action in tort. Beck, 701 P.2d at 798-99. However, we thought that approach analytically flawed and the resulting remedy too crude. Id. at 799-801. We noted that despite some rather wooden platitudes to the contrary, in appropriate cases the contract damages could include foreseeable consequential harms and should result in both compensation and deterrence. Id. at 799, 801-02. We kept tort in reserve for those cases where the plaintiff could prove an independent cause of action arising out of the same facts upon which the breach of contract claim was grounded. Id. at 800 n. 3. Nothing to date has shown this two-layered approach to be inadequate or has challenged its superiority to the tort-only remedy available in other jurisdictions. Absent such a showing, I would adopt a two-layered remedy here, regardless of what other courts have done in the public policy area.
Justice Durham next points to the fact that in several cases this court has relied on tort to remedy public policy violations. E.g., DCR Inc. v. Peak Alarm Co., 663 P.2d 433, 437 (Utah 1983); Leigh Furniture & Carpet Co. v. Isom, 657 P.2d 293, 304 (Utah 1982). She notes that in both cases, the parties’ underlying relationship arose from contract, as did the relationship in Beck. My response is that those cases provide little guidance in deciding the issue before us. Neither addressed in any detail the policy issues for choosing between tort and contract, and both were decided before Beck made clear that plaintiffs could obtain a more generous remedy for breach of certain contractual provisions than might appear available upon first thought.
Without criticizing those particular decisions, I note that in recent years, courts have lacked clear guiding principles by which to determine whether a new cause of action should lie in tort or contract.3 In my view, the remedy for a breach of a contract provision, whether express or implied, ordinarily should be in contract, unless there is a sound reason for providing otherwise. And in deciding whether such a sound reason exists, we should be guided by pragmatic consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the respective remedies in light of the environment in which they are to operate. Viewed in this light, our deci*1290sions in DCR and Leigh Furniture may or may not have been correct in adopting tort as the primary remedy for breach of an implied limitation on the conduct of a party to a contract. The propriety of choosing a tort remedy over contract depends on practical factors. This determination should focus on such variables as the frequency of the conduct in question in the relevant community, the likelihood of the actions’ being done without malice, and the scope and variety of economic arrangements affected by the resulting law. To whatever conclusion such an analysis would lead in the cases of DCR and Leigh Furniture, it would tell little about the issue that confronts us today. We must analyze this case in its own context.
Justice Durham’s final reason for adopting the tort approach seems to be the one on which she places the most weight. She states, “The principal reason for the application of a tort theory to the public policy exception is the availability of damages.” The issue of damages has two aspects. First, Justice Durham expresses concern that contract damages might be limited to back pay and might be further restricted by contractual provisions. Second, she states:
The potential for the imposition of punitive damages under the public policy exception will, we believe, provide an incentive for employers to refrain from using their unique economic position with regard to an employee to coerce conduct which contravenes clear and substantial public policies. Moreover, it will encourage employees to engage in lawful conduct and report violations of the law.
The first of these justifications — concern about the limited damages available for breach of an employment agreement and about possible contractual restrictions on damages — has little weight in Utah after Beck and Berube.
In Beck, we noted that other states have selected tort as the remedy for breaches of covenants implied into first-party insurance contracts as a matter of public policy, in part because they believed that contract remedies were inadequate to make the injured party whole. Beck, 701 P.2d at 798. Another justification was that, because the insurer could predict the amount of damages, there was little disincentive to wilful breach of the covenant. Id. at 799. These are essentially the same arguments to which Justice Durham alludes.
Our response in Beck was not to make such an action lie in tort, but to make it clear that consequential damages could be available for a breach of that particular type of contractual provision and that independent tort actions were not barred. As to consequential damages, we stated that whether they were foreseeable depended on the nature of the contract and the expectations of the parties. But we suggested that in the first-party insurance context, traditional notions of limited contractual damages were inappropriate and that “a broad range of recoverable damages was conceivable,” including attorney fees and mental anguish. Id. at 802. On the deterrence point, we observed that our ruling did not bar tort recovery, including punitive damages in appropriate cases. We noted that the acts constituting a breach of contract “may also result in breaches of duty that are independent of the contract and may give rise to causes of action in tort.” Id. at 800 n. 3.
Beck's two-layered remedy already has entered the wrongful discharge arena. In Berube, we held that a claim of wrongful discharge in violation of the express or implied terms of an employment agreement did not sound in tort, as some courts have held, but in contract. However, lest it be argued that the remedy available to the employee would be inadequate, and also because of the unique nature of the relationship between employers and employees, we adopted the Beck damage standard. Berube, 771 P.2d at 1050.
In Beck, we also addressed the concern that future insurers might attempt to draft contractual provisions that would deprive the insured of the benefit of the covenant we there implied into the agreement as a matter of law. This parallels Justice Durham’s concern here that employers might contractually limit the employees’ remedies *1291for discharges in violation of public policy. Our response in Beck was to state, “The duty to perform the contract in good faith cannot, by definition, be waived by either party to the agreement.” Beck, 701 P.2d at 801 n. 4. A similar observation plainly would be appropriate with respect to the public policy limitation on discharge.
In conclusion, concerns about inadequate recovery and contractual limitations on the right of action are answerable without resort to a tort cause of action.
The second reason Justice Durham advances for preferring tort damages to contract is that punitive damages are available in tort and will deter employers from coercing employees into conduct “which contravenes clear and substantial public policies.” I think that in routine cases, the less drastic Beck remedy, which expands on traditional notions of available contract damages, will achieve deterrence similar to that achieved in the first-party insurance area governed by Beck and in the implied-in-fact contract area governed by Berube. In extreme cases, we can achieve further deterrence by not denying employees general damages and punitive damages where the employer has committed an independent tort.
We have two recent examples of Utah cases where tort actions were joined with Beck -type contract claims and resulted in awards of general and punitive damages. In Hodges v. Gibson Products Co., 811 P.2d 151 (Utah 1991), a fired employee brought both wrongful discharge and malicious prosecution claims. She recovered on both claims, and we affirmed the tort judgment, including the punitive damage award. Id. at 163. In Crookston v. Fire Insurance Exchange, 817 P.2d 789 (Utah 1991), the plaintiffs claimed a breach of a Beck covenant in their first-party insurance contract. They recovered under both the covenant theory and a fraud theory. Again, we affirmed the judgment on the tort claim.
Based on our experience to date, then, there is no ground for the suggestion that Beck’s and Berube’s two-layered contract/tort approach will fail to deter employer misconduct. In fact, where an employer discharges an employee for refusing to violate a statute and the employer knows the conduct demanded is unlawful, it should not be difficult to craft a tort complaint that can withstand a motion to dismiss.4 Cf. Hodges, 811 P.2d at 156-61. Consequently, the two-layered approach I propose would be just as effective as the majority’s tort remedy in compensating injured employees and deterring egregious misconduct on the part of their employers.
My two-layered contract/tort remedy would also avoid many of the inevitable negative consequences that the majority cannot intend but unfortunately invites. I particularly fear the consequences of a vague, ill-defined tort remedy because the *1292employment relationship is one of the most common contractual relationships in society, and certainly one central to the working of the economy. This court has never suggested that in its recent forays into limiting the 19th-century doctrine of employment at will, it is attempting to bar contract law from providing the norms that govern the employment relationship. Specifically, in adopting the public policy limitation on discharge, we intend to limit the scope of permissible contracting only where it trenches on a “clear and substantial” public policy, a policy so crucial that we will not permit parties to contract for its violation. Because we do not wish to chill permissible contracting between employers and employees, we should hone the legal rules we adopt so that the consequences worked by the resulting cause of action are the consequences we anticipate and desire.5
Our need for caution is heightened when we consider that even our clearest and best-crafted rules often have results we do not expect. We write our decisions in the abstract, using a supposed set of facts in our attempt to draw a careful line between the permissible and the impermissible. Once they leave our chambers, however, our rules operate in the real world of inexactitude and compromise, where judges and juries are not always consistent on questions of either liability or damages, where only a small percentage of cases actually go to trial, where parties settle cases on evaluations of relative degrees of risk, and where people and institutions attempt to predict risk and often plan their actions so as to avoid any substantial possibility of suit. As a consequence, the fine, bright line we think we have drawn between the good and the bad becomes, in practice, a broad, unclear swath, encompassing both conduct that clearly runs afoul of the standard we intended and conduct that we had no intention of prohibiting and might, in fact, want to encourage.
Such is the danger here. A candid appraisal of the likely effects of the majority’s tort rule suggests that its collateral negative consequences are far greater than necessary to accomplish our objective. These negative consequences flow from both the definition of the prohibited conduct and the open-ended damages available in tort. We may not be able to prevent entirely these consequences at this stage in the law’s development, but we can limit them by adopting a two-layered contract/tort approach as we did in Beck and Berube.
First, some negative collateral consequences flowing from the definition of discharges in violation of public policy are attributable to the vagueness of the prohibition. The majority offers little help in identifying actionable public policies. It does not even state whether the source of such policies must be in criminal or civil statutes or the constitution or whether such policies may be found in the civil common law. Similarly, the definitions of “clear” and “substantial” are elusive. Other than as suggested earlier in this opinion, I am not sure we can give much more specificity at this time without imprudently limiting our freedom to detail the scope of the rule in the context of future cases as we become more sophisticated about the relevant issues. Nonetheless, there can be *1293no question that the uncertainty caused by this indeterminate definition of applicable public policy will induce the cautious employer to avoid conduct that is plainly permissible. And discharged employees will press claims that are outside the scope of that which we ultimately will find to be prohibited.
Although such uncertainty is the price we pay for the incremental evolution of the common law, the indeterminacy inherent in a vague prohibition on discharges in violation of public policy is magnified immeasurably when, as the majority holds here, a tort remedy is the sole avenue for redress. First, the very nature of the tort is unclear. I assume the employer must act intentionally, though the majority never says so explicitly. But must the employer know that the conduct it demands violates public policy, or is it enough that the employer intentionally but innocently requires conduct that turns out to violate such a policy?
No matter which path the majority takes, the result reveals the inadequacy and the crudeness of its sole reliance on a tort remedy. If the employer must know that the conduct it demands violates public policy, then a discharged employee who cannot make that showing is left without any remedy because his or her claim for relief lies only in intentional tort. On the other hand, if the majority attempts to avoid this flaw in the protections offered by its tort remedy by deciding that the employer need not be conscious of the fact that the demanded act violates public policy, then it would impose a far more draconian tort liability upon the employer than is necessary to achieve its objectives of compensation and deterrence. An employer who acts in good faith but inadvertently violates public policy by a discharge should not be exposed to a claim for punitive damages.
In contrast, if the approach I suggest were adopted, a contract remedy would be available to the employee discharged in violation of public policy regardless of the state of mind of the breaching party. As we noted in Beck, “[E]ven an inadvertent breach of [the implied covenant] can substantially harm the insured and warrants a remedy.” Beck, 701 P.2d at 800. The same can be said of an employee discharged in good faith but in violation of some public policy unknown to the employer. On the other hand, the employer who acts wilfully, with full knowledge that the conduct required violated a clear and substantial public policy, will almost certainly be liable, not only in contract, but also for one of the already established torts, as in Hodges v. Gibson Products Co., 811 P.2d 151 (Utah 1991). In sum, a two-layered contract/tort approach has the virtue of better defining the scope of the public policy limitation.
The second type of unnecessary negative consequences flowing from an exclusively tort remedy is a consequence of the open-ended damages available for tort. The possibility of both special and general damages as well as punitives increases the uncertainty for the employer attempting to appraise its risk and adjust its conduct to avoid that liability. As noted above, in appropriate cases, an employer may be unable to estimate readily Beck contract damages at the time of breach. Beck, 701 P.2d at 801. Given the unique nature of the particular contractual relationship involved, that uncertainty is appropriate. But that indeterminacy pales in comparison with an attempt to estimate even general tort damages, much less the likelihood and amount of any punitive damages. By following the exclusive tort approach, we leave the conscientious employer largely at sea, not only as to determining the propriety of its future conduct, but also as to the consequences of a misstep in its appraisal. As a result, we inevitably will discourage a broad variety of conduct that we in no way have suggested is improper.
There has been no showing that we need to risk this much collateral negative harm to accomplish our purpose. The two-layered contract/tort remedy would increase the certainty of the available damages, thus decreasing the indeterminacy of the law and reducing the breadth of the unintended swath our decision will cut in this sensitive area. Such increased certainty would mean that the law in operation *1294would conform more closely to the law as we intended it.
At the same time, the contract remedy has advantages over the tort in that by adopting it, we leave fewer unanswered questions as to the scope of the prohibited conduct and we provide both a better array of remedies for the harms suffered by employees and more specific deterrents for the wrongs consciously committed by employers.
For the reasons stated, and perhaps stated again, I would reject the tort approach of Justice Durham and follow the path taken in Berube. I would hold that a claim for a discharge in violation of public policy lies in contract.
HALL, C.J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of ZIMMERMAN, J.

. In this regard, I note that the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has recently proposed a model Employment Termination Act governing wrongful discharge. It enlarges on an employer’s traditional liability but limits available remedies. James N. Dertou-zos & Lynn A. Karoly, Labor-Market Responses to Employer Liability ix n. 2 (The RAND Institute for Civil Justice 1992).

. For the sake of clarity, I note that although this rule has been called one of the exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine, it is in reality a public policy limitation on all discharges. As a majority of the court in Berube viewed it, and as I presume the majority in this case would agree, the doctrine barring discharges in violation of public policy does not depend analytically on whether the at-will presumption would otherwise apply to the specific facts of the case, i.e., whether there was an express or implied con- ’ tract limiting the employer’s discretion to discharge. Rather, the public policy limitation should apply to all employment contracts and should preclude the employer from discharging any employee in a manner or for reasons that directly contravene public policy. The employee operating under an express contract should not be in a less advantageous position than the employee who is at will. Berube, 771 P.2d at 1043 n. 10 (Durham, J., joined by Stewart, J.); id. at 1051 (Zimmerman, J., concurring in the result).

. I note that the Uniform Commercial Code ("U.C.C.") disallows any contract provision that is found "unconscionable.” Utah Code Ann. § 70A-2-302 (1990). Certainly, any such provision is made unenforceable because it violates public policy. I find no reasoned distinction between the public policy which underlies the covenant Beck implied in a first-party insurance contract or the unconscionability provision in the U.C.C. — both of which are vindicated by only contract remedies — and that which underlies DCR and Leigh Furniture.

. Although here we deal only with a certified question and therefore make no factual determinations, I note that on the present state of the pleadings and the record, this case does not appear to be one where an action for an independent tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress would lie. Peterson’s is not a classic example of wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. He does not claim that his employer forced him to choose between violating the customs laws and losing his job. Indeed, Peterson admits that his employer was "a stickler for adherence to customs practices.”
His theory of recovery is more attenuated. He contends that his punctilious adherence to the customs laws alienated his underlings and superiors because of the extra time and effort required to comply with import regulations. He alleges further that his refusal to falsify Missouri tax documents angered at least one of his peers at Browning’s home office in Morgan, Utah, giving rise to the perception that Peterson was uncooperative and something less than a team player. The combined result was a widespread belief that Peterson was a difficult person and an inflexible and unpopular manager, who was incapable of raising employee morale. It is Peterson’s argument that this perception, fueled either in whole or in part by his adherence to the law, led to his constructive termination. Without more, this pleading falls short of demonstrating intentional infliction of emotional distress, which requires that the defendant intended to inflict distress through outrageous and intolerable conduct that offends the generally accepted standards of decency and morality. Samms v. Eccles, 11 Utah 2d 289, 293, 358 P.2d 344, 347 (1961).
Of course, all this is not to say that Peterson may not be able to amend his pleadings to state an independent tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

. A just-released study by The RAND Institute for Civil Justice documents the collateral consequences of recent nationwide changes in the employment-at-will doctrine. These consequences include a decline in the aggregate employment level in states adopting modifications in the employment-at-will doctrine. The severity of this decline appears to vary depending on the type of damages available for various wrongful discharge causes of action. For example, when tort damages are available, the decline in the equilibrium employment level is much greater than when only contract remedies are used. While this study does not settle definitively the collateral consequences of judicial modification of employment-at-will doctrines or whether they are beneficial, it does suggest that the cost of these collateral consequences "dwarf the direct legal expenses associated with this new litigation,” including "costs of jury awards, settlements, and attorney fees.” James N. Der-touzos & Lynn A. Karoly, Labor-Market Responses to Employer Liability xiii, xiv (The RAND Institute for Civil Justice 1992). I do not suggest that these collateral consequences are bad, but only that they are not intended, much less understood, consequences of our changing the law. For that reason, we should proceed cautiously lest we do more harm than good.