Court Opinion

ID: 9730304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:07:55.965286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:05.686817
License: Public Domain

POCHÉ, Acting P. J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I dissent from the holding (part IV of the opinion) that an employer who seeks to burden the right of privacy of an employee may then fire the employee for resisting those efforts and avoid any tort liability for the firing.
The question is whether Barbara Luck stated and proved a cause of action for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. What she stated and proved to the jury’s satisfaction is that she was fired for insisting upon her right of privacy. Nevertheless the majority concludes that even though her privacy rights were unlawfully impaired, she has no claim in tort for the company’s conduct because (1) public policy was not involved (“The right to privacy is, by its very name, a private right, not a public one”) (maj. opn., ante, p. 28) and (2) the public policy was not firmly established at the time of her retaliatory firing. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 29.)
A cause of action for wrongful termination in violation of public policy is not new. Our Supreme Court in Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (1980) 27 Cal.3d 167 [164 Cal.Rptr. 839, 610 P.2d 1330, 9 A.L.R.4th 314] explained 10 years ago that such a discharge is “wrongful” because the employer has a duty implied in law to conduct its affairs in compliance with fundamental principles of public policy. What the court made plain was that to recover for tortious discharge an employee must plead and prove that he or she was discharged for a reason contravening fundamental principles of public policy. That requirement was in no way diminished by the recent decision in Foley v. Interactive Data Corp. (1988) 47 Cal.3d 654 [254 Cal.Rptr. 211, 765 P.2d 373]. In truth it was reinforced in that the Supreme Court there saw the issue before them precisely in such Tameny terms and said so. “Regardless of whether the existence of a statutory or constitutional link is required under Tameny, disparagement of a basic public policy must be alleged, and we turn now to determining whether plaintiff has done so here.” (Id. at p. 669.)
*32The Supreme Court in Foley emphasized Tameny's insistence that the public policy basis for the cause of action must be firmly established, fundamental and substantial. (Foley v. Interactive Data Corp., supra, 47 Cal.3d at p. 670, fn. 11.) Applying that test it found no substantial public policy which prohibits an employer from discharging an employee for reporting information to the employer relevant to the employer’s interest. Because it determined that the duty of an employee to disclose information to his employer serves only the private interest of the employer, it held that “the rationale underlying the Tameny cause of action is not implicated.” (Id. at p. 671.) In layman’s terms there was no public policy involved.
In the instant case Barbara Luck thought she located the public policy right at the start of this state’s basic document which reads: “Preamble. We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution. Article I. Declaration of Rights. § 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”
Unlike the majority I find the public policy basis for Barbara Luck’s cause of action right where she finds it, and I find it to be firmly established, fundamental and substantial. What could be more firmly established than the very first section of the first article of the state Constitution? What could be more fundamental than that document’s enumeration of inalienable rights? What could be more substantial than “enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy”? Having met the requirements of Tameny and Foley, she has stated and proved her cause of action.
The analysis of the majority is doubly flawed. It applies an inappropriate test to the wrong policy and therefore reaches the wrong result. The majority apply the tests set out in Foley without regard to the fundamental distinction that this case involves public policy derived from a personal, constitutional right and not public policy as reflected in a criminal or regulatory statute.
To illustrate the type of conduct which “inures to the benefit of the public at large rather than to a particular employer or employee,” Foley looked at cases in which the employer sought to compel an employee to engage in illegal conduct by unlawfully fixing prices (Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co., supra, 27 Cal.3d 167, 170) or by committing perjury before a legislative committee. (Petermann v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (1959) 174 Cal.App.2d 184, 188-189 [44 P.2d 25].) In addition the opinion notes *33with apparent approval instances where the tort arose because an employee was fired for disclosing illegal conduct either by reporting criminal activity (Garibaldi v. Lucky Food Stores, Inc. (9th Cir. 1984) 726 F.2d 1367, 1374; Palmateer v. International Harvester Co. (1981) 85 I11.2d 124 [421 N.E.2d 876, 879-880]) or by objecting to unsafe working conditions (Hentzel v. Singer Co. (1982) 138 Cal.App.3d 290 [188 Cal.Rptr. 159, 35 A.L.R.4th 1015]; Foley v. Interactive Data Corp., supra, 47 Cal.3d at 670).
These cases, as the majority read Foley, define the outer limits of the universe of conduct which can give rise to the tort of wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. Such a reading means that the cause of action will not be available if the public policy is protective of a purely personal right.
Employer violations of personal rights will virtually never1 yield a cause of action for the injured employee because violations of personal rights cannot survive the void-if-they-had-contracted-for-it test suggested in a Foley footnote (Foley v. Interactive Data Corp., supra, 47 Cal.3d at pp. 670-671, fn. 12) and applied by the majority. Nothing in the Foley decision suggests that the voidness test has any applicability to evaluating a public policy with a constitutional source. In contrast to the situation at hand which involves inalienable rights specifically set forth in the Constitution, Foley arose out of the assertion of, what Chief Justice Lucas most charitably referred to as, a “statutory touchstone” which appellant argued gave rise to a duty to report information to the employer. (Id. at p. 669.) The court found it “unclear” whether the “alleged duty is one founded in statute” (id. at p. 670), but went forth to decide the case “[w]hether or not there is a statutory duty.” (Ibid.) In doing so the court referred to the difficulty of finding substantial public policy reflected in statutes by explaining that “. . . many statutes simply regulate conduct between private individuals, or impose requirements whose fulfillment does not implicate fundamental public policy concerns. ” (Id. at p. 669, italics added.) It hardly can be said with a straight face that the declaration of rights contained in article I, section 1 of the Constitution imposes requirements whose fulfillment does not implicate fundamental public policy concerns.
Since it is the task of constitutions by their very nature to enunciate high public policy rather than to simply regulate conduct between private individuals, it makes no sense to apply to such documents—particularly to a bill of rights—any test designed to determine whether a statute sets forth public policy. Nothing whatsoever on the face of the Foley decision requires such an unusual determination, and since this court has an obligation to construe *34Supreme Court decisions so as not to reach an absurd result, I would not apply the test suggested in footnote 12 of Foley to the Constitution of the State of California.
Unless we accept the perfectly logical and defensible position that inalienable personal rights inure by their very nature to the benefit of all Californians and thus to the public benefit, we accord no practical protection to the very rights given the greatest deference by our Constitution. The bizarre outcome of the majority’s reasoning is evident here. Barbara Luck has, they acknowledge, an inalienable right to be free from an involuntary intrusion into her privacy by her employer’s demand she submit to urinalysis. Had her employer not fired her for refusing the test, she presumably could have obtained injunctive relief from the testing. However, because her employer immediately fired her for insubordination before she could seek such judicial vindication of her rights she is deprived of her job and of any tortious claim for the employer’s conduct.2
My second objection to the majority’s reasoning is that they incorrectly identify the public policy interest as a “policy prohibiting urinalysis.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 29.) The policy at issue is not urinalysis, but the preservation of personal privacy.
In Foley the Supreme Court made it clear that the policy we look to in search of public interest is the source of the duty implied in law upon the employer. (Foley v. Interactive Data Corp., supra, 47 Cal.3d at p. 666.) Here the duty derives from article I, section 1 of the California Constitution. Had Luck instead relied on a public policy embodied in a statute prohibiting involuntary physical testing of employees then the issue of whether such a hypothetical statute in 1985 prohibited urinalysis would be relevant. She did not. Californians acknowledged their privacy right by amending our Constitution to include privacy in 1974, some 11 years before Luck’s firing. The policy protecting privacy embodied in that amendment, both temporally and philosophically, was firmly established, fundamental, substantial and clearly mandated long before Luck was fired.
The limits the majority impose upon a public policy based wrongful discharge are inconsistent both with basic human dignity and with our Supreme Court’s decisions. Without acknowledging that they do so the *35majority seek a return to an era of masters and servants. As Justice Tobriner reminded us in Tameny modern notions of employer-employee relations were “enunciated by this court more than 35 years ago, [when it noted] that ‘[t]he days when a servant was practically the slave of his master have long since passed.’ [Citation.]” (Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co., supra, 27 Cal.3d at p. 178.)
For these reasons I would affirm the judgment below on the ground that Barbara Luck proved a cause of action for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. Further, I join only in the resolution of the punitive damages issue (part V, section A [unpublished portion of the majority opinion]), without adopting the analysis set forth therein.3* In all other respects I concur in the majority opinion.
A petition for a rehearing was denied March 23, 1990, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. The petition of appellant Southern Pacific Transportation Company for review by the Supreme Court was denied May 31, 1990.

 Presumably a contract to enslave would sufficiently offend public policy to be void. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 6.)

In the recently decided case of Semore v. Pool (1990) 217 Cal.App.3d 1087, 1098 [266 Cal.Rptr.280], the majority similarly conclude that the privacy interests of an employee terminated for refusing a compelled drug test implicate a fundamental public policy. As they note, “privacy, like the other inalienable rights listed first in our Constitution, is at least as fundamental as the antitrust statutes in Tameny or the perjury statutes in Petermann. ” (Id. at p. 1096.)

See footnote, ante, p. 1.