Court Opinion

ID: 9691237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:18:17.272772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:13.848249
License: Public Domain

SIMONETT, Justice
(dissenting in part and concurring in part).
In its handbook, Equitable reserved its right as an at-will employer to dismiss an employee for serious misconduct, but it agreed it would not dismiss for other misconduct or poor performance without a pri- or warning and an opportunity afforded to the employee to bring his or her performance up to a satisfactory level.
In this case we have an unusual situation. This was not a case where the employee could be warned about her performance and told not to do it again. The situation was unlikely to re-occur. If plaintiffs were asked to travel again with adequate instructions about use of their expense advances, they would presumably *893have abided by their instructions. The problem here was the past mistake made by plaintiffs’ supervisor and the supervisor’s secretary in not giving adequate instructions for the Pittsburgh trip. Plaintiffs insisted the employer should be bound by this mistake and that Equitable, not they, should bear the cost of the mistake. Human nature being what it is, the problem escalated into something more serious, a confrontation in which neither side would yield.
At this point, Equitable discharged the plaintiffs for gross insubordination, i.e., for flagrant unwillingness to submit to authority. Unfortunately for Equitable, the jury found there was no gross insubordination. It does not follow, however, that Equitable breached any contract by discharging plaintiffs on an unproven charge of insubordination. It is undisputed plaintiffs were employees at will except as the employee handbook may have modified this arrangement. Nothing in the handbook says or can be construed to say Equitable had agreed the employees could only be discharged for cause. See Hunt v. IBM Mid America Employees Federal Credit Union, 384 N.W.2d 853 (Minn.1986). If plaintiffs have a remedy, it must lie in tort, not contract, unless we are willing to do away with at will employment.
We have no idea how the jury construed the handbook, although, to me, it seems likely the jury was influenced by the trial court’s erroneous instruction on “fair dealing,” especially on the meaning- of the handbook phrase “misconduct serious enough to warrant immediate dismissal.” But as Justice Kelley points out in his dissent, the interpretation of the handbook, since it involved no extrinsic evidence, was a question of law for the court to decide. See Turner v. Alpha Phi Sorority House, 276 N.W.2d 63, 66 (Minn.1979) (“That the jury resolved the issue does not transform it into a question of fact”). In my view, the handbook provision was intended by the parties to be part of their employment relationship to the extent stated in the first paragraph of my dissent, but this provision, so understood, was irrelevant to the dispute between the parties and, therefore, there was no contract breach. The handbook provision here is not to be construed as if it were the entire agreement on matters of employee discipline and dismissal (it is not), but as a modification of the parties’ at-will contract to the extent expressed.1
What we are left with is a common-law defamation action, such as we recognized in Stuempges v. Park, Davis & Co., 297 N.W.2d 252, 255 (Minn.1980), except that here we allow the publication to be satisfied, subject to certain strict safeguards, by “self publication.” On this issue, as well as the punitive damages issue, I agree with the majority.