Court Opinion

ID: 9470933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:20:55.545712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:11.524991
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent for two reasons. First, I cannot agree with my colleagues that we may now refract the erroneous jury instruction through the lenses of hindsight and conclude that Measday satisfied his burden of proof. That question was for the jury, after proper instruction.
Second, although my colleagues are both Texas lawyers and I am an apprentice at its law, I disagree with their conclusion that Texas law permits an employer to prove only the cause for discharge it advances on termination. In Maxwell v. Cardinal Petroleum Corp., 471 S.W.2d 785 (Tex.Civ.App. 1971), the court held an employer who is dissatisfied with an employee’s efforts to perform a contract may discharge the employee unless it acts in bad faith. The court found that the jury might conclude that the employer did not act in good faith and remanded the case, noting: “Upon remand ... an issue inquiring about [the employer’s] good faith dissatisfaction with [the employee’s] performance of the contract will suffice.” Id. at 789 (on motion for rehearing) (emphasis added). The court did not limit the special issue to whether the employee had agreed to get more business, although his failure to do so was the reason the employer gave for the discharge. Similarly, in Zuider Zee Oyster Bar, Inc. v. Martin, 503 S.W.2d 292 (Tex.Civ.App.1973), the court held that the employer was not entitled to special issues on six reasons advanced for the employee’s discharge because the employer was “without material evidence on a material issue concerning anything [the employee] had failed to do which constituted a breach of any duty owed under the contract.” Id. at 295. The court did not suggest that the employer could not have advanced all of these contentions had it been able to produce evidence.
Other states permit an employer to advance any reason supported by the evidence to justify a discharge. See maj. op., 713 F.2d at 126 n. 6. A single decision rendered 66 years ago is inadequate support for a categorical ruling that Texas has an unusual doctrine to the contrary. The employer who might salve an employee’s feelings when discharging him by giving some reason not damaging to the employee’s pride is permitted to do so only at the expense of forfeiting better-based defenses to a law suit that courtesy precluded before the employee chose to litigate.
I would reverse the judgment.