Court Opinion

ID: 9627726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:52:41.635531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:39:15.426537
License: Public Domain

LINDER, J.,
concurring in part; dissenting in part.
The majority holds that at least those plaintiffs who actively participated in making arrests and in related activities may pursue their wrongful discharge claims because, notwithstanding that those activities were what defendant hired plaintiffs to perform and that plaintiffs performed them more vigilantly than defendant apparently wanted, plaintiffs were engaged in and were fired for advancing the important public duty of crime prevention and public safety. The majority explains further:
“Other statutes, as they relate to the circumstances here, further define the public policy involved. As pleaded by plaintiffs, defendant hired and trained plaintiffs solely to maintain order at a large, public music concert and, if necessary, to make arrests to effectuate that purpose. In such large public gatherings, the potential for public disorder is increased. Further, it is reasonable to infer from defendant’s hiring of plaintiffs that peace officers would not be present or not be present in sufficient numbers at the concert to ensure the preservation of public order. In those circumstances, Oregonians have expressed a common concern for reliable and effective private law enforcement, as demonstrated by ORS 181.870 through ORS 181.991, which regulate the licensing and training of persons who provide security services at such ‘public activities.’ See also OAR 259-060-0005 (‘The objectives of [these private security providers rules] are to * * * rais[e] the level of competence of private security personnel.’).” 160 Or App at 145-46 (footnote omitted).
With respect, I find the majority’s reasoning to be circular. The reason the majority concludes that plaintiffs’ employment contract with defendant does not fall into the usual “at-will” situation, and that it entails a public duty related to law enforcement, is that defendant contracted with plaintiffs to perform law enforcement-related duties. It *152would appear that plaintiffs and defendant had a very different view of how plaintiffs w;ere to perform those duties but, nevertheless, the employment contract was one through which plaintiffs were to perform standard private security services on defendant’s behalf.
I agree with the majority that law enforcement, public safety and order and the like are matters of great public concern. In my view, however, the vindication of that concern is primarily entrusted to the public authorities. To be sure, as the majority indicates, private citizens — such as plaintiffs— have certain law enforcement authority under certain circumstances. Additionally, when private citizens hold themselves out as being in the business of providing security services — as plaintiffs apparently do — the majority is again right in observing that they are subject to state regulation and, to some extent, their involvement may reduce the need for and provide some of the services that would otherwise require an actual police presence.
While all of that is true, plaintiffs are not the police. They were people who were hired to perform services for defendant that, in some particulars, might resemble the law enforcement and public safety functions that the police provide. Significantly, the only authority that plaintiffs had at defendant’s premises and over the persons on the premises stemmed from the fact that defendant hired them to be there. That is, plaintiffs were there, doing what they were doing, pursuant to their private contract of employment. Defendant terminated plaintiffs’ employment, in effect, because plaintiffs were providing more “law enforcement” than defendant or defendant’s patrons wanted. In other words, defendant regarded plaintiffs’ performance of the parties’ private agreement to be unsatisfactory.1
The majority’s crucial premise is that, because plaintiffs were hired to provide services that come within the *153ambit of “law enforcement” as most broadly defined, their services in furtherance of their contract with defendant simultaneously discharged a public duty that is functionally indistinguishable in its nature and scope from the one that is principally entrusted to and fulfilled by public peace officers. I disagree with that premise. At the margins, the line between the police and private citizens who perform police functions perhaps can become murky. However, this case is not close to the margins. This is not a case where a private security officer was fired for arresting the boss’s son, any more than it is a case where a police officer was fired for giving the mayor’s son a speeding ticket. Nor is this a case where the situation that confronted plaintiffs escalated from the ranges of anticipated disorder into a out-of-control mob scene that required immediate action equivalent in its dimensions to a police crowd control operation.
Instead, what was involved here was simply that plaintiffs were hired by defendant as private security officers and, apparently, did something akin to what they understood was expected of them. That they were fired for doing so might have been the predicate for a breach of contract action, were it not for the fact that they were subject to termination without cause. However, they have no cause of action based on any theory that they were, by agreement or in fact, performing a role equivalent to that of police officers. Insofar as the majority means to say that there is a public duty or societal obligation for citizens generally or private security personnel specifically to perform — or to be allowed to perform — non-crisis law enforcement activities of the kind that the police themselves might have chosen to conduct under these circumstances, I do not agree.
The majority’s holding creates a significant dilemma for private employers. An employer is hable for the torts of its employees committed in the course and scope of the employment relationship. Chesterman v. Barmon, 305 Or 439, 442, 753 P2d 404 (1988). Law enforcement-type activities can be a source of substantial tort exposure, involving, as they do, an often delicate balance between maintaining public order and respecting individual civil liberties. An employee who over-zealously or otherwise crosses the line between permissible *154law enforcement and an infringement of civil rights can create significant liability — even punitive in nature — for an employer. See, e.g., Blume v. Fred Meyer, Inc., 155 Or App 102, 936 P2d 700 (1998) (affirming verdict against retail store imposing compensatory damages of $25,000 and punitive damages of $450,000 for employee’s false arrest of store customer). For that and other legitimate reasons, an employer may decide to limit the authorization for employees to respond to suspected violations of the law (which can encompass potential acts of theft, trespass, harassment, and underage alcohol use, to identify only a few).
The majority’s holding at least suggests that a private employee is free to disregard an employer’s directions not to take law enforcement action because private citizens have a “public duty” to enforce the laws whenever and wherever possible. Alternatively, if the majority’s answer to that dilemma would be to say that the analysis turns on whether the employee was hired as a private security person and whether the employer adequately directed the employee not to take certain law enforcement action, then the majority is conceding that the scope of the duty is defined by the employment contract. The fact is, the majority cannot have it both ways. There either is a public duty for these private citizens to enforce the criminal laws that exists apart from their employment contract, or there is not. If there is, an employer is not free to discharge an employee for disregarding the employer’s directions on whether and when to perform that public duty, or for otherwise not performing to the employer’s satisfaction. If, on the other hand, a duty to take law enforcement action exists only because the employee was hired as a private security person and at least arguably was authorized to take certain actions, then a discharge for engaging in those actions should be the source of a contract claim only.
In dissenting from the majority on this point, there are two things I wish to emphasize. First, I do not find the various analogies that the parties advance to be particularly analogous, and I therefore want to make clear that I am saying nothing about situations that differ from this one and that might come within the analogies. For example, plaintiffs imply that Oregon has a heritage of the citizenry aiding the constabulary in the protection of the public safety and the *155enforcement of the criminal law. However, this is not a case involving a nineteenth century posse or any twentieth century analog that it may have. This is a case about plaintiffs who accepted employment for profit to provide security services on defendant’s private property and who did not perform that employment to defendant’s expectations — however unadmirable those expectations may have been.
Second, this opinion in no way suggests that the maintenance of order, the arrest of offenders and the like are not matters of public importance. Rather, my point is that the private performance of those functions under the circumstances here does not give rise to a “public duty,” within the meaning of the wrongful discharge cases, that affects the terms or the terminability of this contract between these parties.
For those reasons, I dissent from the majority’s decision insofar as it reverses any of the wrongful discharge claims. Because I view the intentional infliction of emotional distress claims as inseparable from the wrongful discharge claims, I also dissent from the majority’s reversal of the dismissal of those claims. I agree with the majority’s affirmance of the trial court’s rulings dismissing the claims of the “nonparticipating” plaintiffs.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent, in part, and concur, in part.

 I agree with the majority that nothing in the complaint lends itself to the inference that plaintiffs’ performance of their services was deficient. See 160 Or App at 9 n 6. However, the majority is incorrect in understanding my statement to mean that plaintiffs’ performance was in fact unsatisfactory. My intended meaning is simply that, rightly or wrongly and for good reasons or bad, defendant was sufficiently unsatisfied with their performance to terminate the at-will relationship.