Court Opinion

ID: 9548340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:02:00.620342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:49.355737
License: Public Domain

HUNTLEY, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree fully with Justice Bistline’s dissent. I write to discuss an alternate ground which also indicates the majority’s result is incorrect.
The evidence was sufficient in this case to find that Lockwood’s adoption of the policy manual changed Spero’s contract from an at-will employment contract to an agreement under which Spero could be released only for cause. Justice Shepard’s opinion apparently found the following facts sufficient to hold that Spero’s contract was at-will, in spite of Lockwood’s adoption of the personnel policy manual:
The [district] court found that the manual was not communicated to plaintiff and that Spero’s obtaining of a copy “appears to have been little more than a fortuity; and not the stuff of contractual understanding or formation.” He did not receive or request a copy in relation to his job security, nor was there sufficient evidence that Spero ever read or relied upon the manual or continued his employment in reliance on its terms. Lockwood was free to change the manual at any time and a certain level of executives could disregard or modify the manual at their pleasure. The court noted, “Even Mr. Spero never testified that he thought the manual was a contact.”
I find that analysis inadequate. Seemingly, the majority asserts that none of the district court’s findings may be overturned unless clearly erroneous. However, our deference applies only to the district court’s factual findings. I.R.C.P. 52(a). If the district court incorrectly applied the law to this case, we may of course overturn the district court’s ruling.
While determining whether a contract exists is a question for the trier of fact, Johnson v. Allied Stores, 106 Idaho 363, 369, 679 P.2d 640, 646 (1984), I believe the district court applied the wrong rule in determining whether a contract existed. The district court should have followed this reasoning from Toussaint v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Michigan, 408 Mich. 579, 292 N.W.2d 880, 892 (1980):
While an employer need not establish personnel policies or practices, where an employer chooses to establish such policies and practices and makes them known to its employees, the employment relationship is presumably enhanced. The employer secures an orderly, cooperative and loyal work force, and the employee the peace of mind associated with job security and the conviction that he will be treated fairly. No pre-employment negotiations need take place and the parties’ minds need not meet on the subject; nor does it matter that the employee knows nothing of the particulars of the employer’s policies and practices or that the employer may change them unilaterally. It is enough that the employer chooses, presumably in its own interest, to create an environment in which the employee believes that, what*78ever the personnel policies and practices, they are established and official at any given time, purport to be fair, and are applied consistently and uniformly to each employee. The employer has then created a situation “instinct with an obligation.” (Citations omitted).
The district court attempted to distinguish Toussaint from the present case on two grounds. The district court erred on both counts. First, the district court held that Toussaint had received the policy manual in response to questions about job security while Spero did not. I find the two situations to be indistinguishable. Spero testified that, on several occasions, his supervisors assured him that “as long as you do your job, you’re on the team.” Dan Walters, Spero’s immediate supervisor, testified that “sales were all that was important.” Moreover, the Michigan court, in the above-quoted passage, stated that no specific pre-employment negotiations were necessary to modify an employment contract. As a second ground for distinguishing Toussaint, the district court cited the fact that Toussaint received the manual at the initial hiring and Spero did not receive his until years after hiring. As stated above, the Michigan court found no need for implicit bargaining concerning the personnel manual. Further, Spero could not have received the manual until at least 1977, because the company did not adopt the manual until then. While Spero may have received the manual “fortuitously,” the benefit to the employer still justifies enforcing the manual’s provisions.
If the district court had applied the above language from Toussaint, the court would have had to have found that Spero’s employment contract had been modified to require cause to terminate the employment relationship.
I see a compelling reason to adopt the Toussaint standard. The policy reasons behind the at-will employment doctrine do not apply with great force to the advanced economy of the late 20th century. The at-will employment doctrine provides a subsidy to commercial concerns by creating a presumption that an employee may be discharged at the employer’s will unless, in the majority’s words, “an employee is hired pursuant to a contract which specifies the duration of the employment or limits the reasons for which an employee may be discharged____” Such a subsidy may have been necessary in the 18th and 19th centuries when industry struggled to develop the American economy — the worker’s need for security paled in comparison with the need of society to tame our wild continent. In today’s highly developed and competitive economy, commercial concerns need no such subsidy vis-a-vis their employees. Non-union employees usually have to accept the contract which their employer offers; they have no leverage to negotiate for special treatment. Therefore, where an employee has proven that he performs his job adequately and productively in accordance with company policy, the judiciary should discourage employers from arbitrarily terminating employment. This argument becomes even more compelling when an employee may have implicitly relied on a company policy not to fire the employee except for cause. Yet the majority does not discuss the desirability of the at-will doctrine, instead discussing Lockwood’s hiring Spero as if we could expect that elaborate negotiations had taken place between the two. We should have taken the first step today to allow the at-will employment doctrine to make its well-deserved exit from the law of Idaho.
The end seems inevitable. Several states have acted already to eliminate or limit the scope of the at-will employment doctrine. Some have taken the tack of the Michigan court in implying contractual terms from actions of the employer such as adopting a personnel policy manual. See, e.g. Toussaint, supra; Yartzoff v. Democrat Herald Publishing Company, 281 Or. 651, 576 P.2d 356, 359 (1978) (concurring with the Michigan court in holding that a jury could find consideration in the actions of the employer in adopting an employer handbook). Other states have taken the approach of implying a covenant of good faith and fair dealing in all contracts, thereby limiting *79the reasons for which an employee may be discharged. See, Foley v. U.S. Paving Co., 262 Cal.App.2d 499, 505, 68 Cal.Rptr. 780, 784 (1968) (applying the covenant of good faith and fair dealings to an employee incentive contract.) I believe these approaches will dominate the law in the not-too-distant future. We should not shackle ourselves with an outmoded approach.