Court Opinion

ID: 9469918
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:52:04.166124+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:37.771837
License: Public Domain

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
My disagreement with the opinion- of the court is narrow. I join in the holding that the complaint fails to state a claim for breach of the terms of an express contract. I join, as well, in the holding that any cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress is time barred. Like the majority, I conclude that if Clare R. Bruffett has a cause of action, not time barred, it must be for termination of an at will contract of employment for reasons which violate a public policy announced by a public agency competent to articulate such policy. We must in this diversity case make a prediction as to whether the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, as presently constituted, would recognize such a cause of action for termination of at will employment because of a non-disabling diabetic condition.
In Bonham v. Dresser Industries, Inc., 569 F.2d 187, 195 (3d Cir.1977), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 821, 99 S.Ct. 87, 58 L.Ed.2d 113 (1978), a panel of this court, affirming a summary judgment in favor of the defendant on a claim that a termination of at will employment violated public policy, stated “that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act and the procedures established therein provide the exclusive remedy for vindication of the right to be free from discrimination based on age.” The Bonham panel obviously misread the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, for like similar statutes in other states it provides that the administrative remedy in question is exclusive only when resorted to.1 The Bonham panel’s misreading of Pennsylvania law is manifested unequivocally in a subsequent decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. In Fye v. Central Transportation, Inc., 487 Pa. 137, 140-41, 409 A.2d 2, 4 (1979), referring to the Human Relations Act, Justice Nix explains:
The General Assembly, recognizing the invidiousness and the pervasiveness of the practice of discrimination,5 attempted by the PHRA to create a procedure and an agency specially designed and equipped to attack this persisting problem and to provide relief to citizens who
*921have been unjustly injured thereby. Although attempting to fashion a special remedy to meet this illusive and deceptive evil, the General Assembly did not withdraw the other remedies that might be available depending upon the nature of the injury sustained. The legislature recognizing that the effectiveness of the procedure it had created would be enhanced by the exclusivity of the provisions of the Act, and the undesirability of allowing the person aggrieved to commence several different actions for relief, Daly v. School Dist. of Darby Tp., 434 Pa. 286, 252 A.2d 638 (1969), provided an election for the complaining person to opt for relief under the provisions of PHRA or the right to seek redress by other remedies that might be available.
(Emphasis supplied). This subsequent statement of Pennsylvania law has overruled Bonham’s misstatement of it and in a diversity case binds this panel. See Leaning v. New York Life Ins. Co., 130 F.2d 580, 581 (3d Cir.1942). The holding in Fye is not itself dispositive, since in that case the plaintiff, relying on a Pennsylvania common law remedy, had in fact resorted to the Human Rights Commission. But the court’s analysis is quite plainly predicated upon the assumption that, absent resort to the Commission, the complaint which charged termination of at will employment by reason of pregnancy stated a cause of action.
We are required, therefore, to make a prediction as to whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would recognize such a cause of action for termination of at will employment because of non-disabling diabetes. Moreover in doing so our role as federal judges should not be the stultifying one of using a scissors and a paste pot, but of using the same tools of the judicial process as are available to state court judges in Pennsylvania, including statutes, judicial opinions, treatises, prevailing mores, the trends of decisions in other states, and even our perception of the likely direction of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania as a result of changes in its membership. See Corbin, The Laws of the Several States, 50 Yale L.J. 762, 775-6 (1941). In doing so we may occasionally produce a conflict between a federal and a state decision, but that is the inevitable result of a system which provides for litigation of state law causes of action in a federal forum. Indeed the Bonham case is a good illustration of the problem; a plain misreading by a federal court of a Pennsylvania statute.
For several reasons the majority’s prediction about the trend of decisions in Pennsylvania with respect to public policy limitations on the at will employment doctrine are in my view wrong. I agree with the majority that the starting point for analysis of the problem is the well known case of Geary v. United States Steel Co., 456 Pa. 171, 319 A.2d 176 (1974). In that case four justices reiterated Pennsylvania’s adherence to the common law rule, developed in the heyday of the nineteenth century industrialization, that at will employment could be terminated for any reason.2 The employee was unsuccessful in convincing the majority that a termination because of protests about the marketing of a dangerous product violated Pennsylvania public policy. Even the Geary majority acknowledged, however, that Pennsylvania’s common law recognized a public policy exception to the nineteenth century doctrine. Justice Pomeroy wrote:
It may be granted that there are areas of an employee’s life in which his employer *922has no legitimate interest. An intrusion into one of these areas by virtue of the employer’s power to discharge might plausibly give rise to a cause of action, particularly where some recognized facet of public policy is threatened. The notion that substantive due process elevates an employer’s privilege of hiring and discharging his employees to an absolute constitutional right has long been discredited.
319 A.2d at 180 (emphasis supplied). The difference in the closely divided Geary court, thus, was not over whether Pennsylvania recognized a public policy exception to the at will employment doctrine, but only over whether discharge for whistle blowing about a defective product fell within it. See id. 319 A.2d at 183 (Roberts, J., dissenting).
Since the Geary decision all save one of the justices who joined in the majority opinion have left the court. Thus even if we were to accept the majority opinion in Geary as an expression of unwillingness to take an expansive view about the public policy exception, we could not at this late date assume that to be the prevailing attitude. We cannot say, as was once said of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, that in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
[t]he emphasis is on precedent and adherence to the older ways, not on creating new causes of action or encouraging the use of novel judicial remedies that have sprung up in less conservative communities. Here abides the ancient faith in the right of men to chose their own associates, make their own arrangements, govern themselves and thus grow in responsibility without much in the way either of hinderance or help from the state.
Pomerantz v. Clark, 101 F.Supp. 341, 346 (D.Mass.1951) (Wysanski, J.). Rather we must recognize that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in recent years has in many areas of the law been a leader in adopting reforms in the common law. Our knowledge of the dynamism of that court must enlighten our judgment in predicting how it would react to a case like this one.
Recognition of public policy exceptions to the at will employment doctrine is the clear trend both of decisions and of statutes throughout the United States.3 The reasons for wholesale reconsideration of the traditional American rule are set forth in the Report of the Committee on Labor and Employment Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, At Will Employment and the Problem of Unjust Dismissal, 36 Rec.A.B.City N.Y. 157 (1981). That report points out that the traditional American common law rule, adopted in place of former rules defining the master-servant relationship as one of status rather than contract, was in the late twentieth century an anomaly in the law among the industrial democracies. Encouraging the clear trend toward its reconsideration, the distinguished committee4 concluded:
The American rule that authorizes an employer to discharge at will merits reexamination. Constitutional and contract law principles that undergirded the rule have been modified over the past century. The American approach is unique among the western industrialized nations. The modern reality of relative immobility in the labor market, encouraged by a web of ties that bind the employee to the job, places in question a doctrine that rests on *923a theoretical non-mutuality of obligation, and may have the effect of empowering the employer to work considerable unfairness in particular cases or to use the discharge weapon to subvert established public policies.
Some commentators have urged that all employees in this country should enjoy general protections against discharge without “just cause.” Such a change would be most appropriately accomplished by legislation. The Committee at the present time takes no position whether such legislation should be enacted.
Some courts have recognized a cause of action, in appropriate circumstances, for discharges that violate statutory or other established public policies, including discharges of whistleblowers who seek to correct employer practices in violation of such policies. The Committee endorses such decisions, and would support legislation along these lines.
Id. at 184. It seems highly unlikely to me that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which has so often in recent years been among the first state courts to undertake reforms of the common law, would disregard the direction of the law in other states, or the strong policy arguments in favor of an expansive view of the public policy exception advanced by distinguished commentators.
Moreover in the situation before us the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would not be concerned that its notions of public policy were out of step with those of the Pennsylvania legislature. In Geary there was no legislative expression of public policy on the issue which resulted in the discharge. In this case the legislature has spoken:
It is hereby declared to be the public policy of this Commonwealth to foster the employment of all individuals in accordance with their fullest capacities regardless of their ... handicap or disability ... and to safeguard their right to obtain and hold employment without ... discrimination.
Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, § 1(b), Pa.Stat.Ann. tit. 43, § 952(b) (Purdon Supp. 1982). There was no such legislative determination of public policy in the Geary case, and a closely divided court declined to adopt one by judicial action alone. But even the Geary majority would not have rejected the applicability of a legislative public policy determination.
Since Geary, those Pennsylvania courts which have addressed the question have all recognized that the traditional at will employment doctrine is qualified by a public policy exception. See Hunter v. Port Authority of Allegheny County, 277 Pa.Super. 4, 419 A.2d 631 (1980) (discharge of at will employee because of pardoned conviction); Reuter v. Fowler & Williams, Inc., 255 Pa. Super. 28, 386 A.2d 119 (1978) (discharge of at will employee for taking time off to serve on jury duty). This court has held that Pennsylvania recognizes the public policy exception. Perks v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 611 F.2d 1363, 1366 (3d Cir. 1979) (discharge of at will employee for refusing to take a polygraph test). In the latter ease we found an expression of the Commonwealth’s public policy in a statute prohibiting employers from requiring polygraphs. Perks is authority for two propositions which should be dispositive here. First, it establishes that legislative expressions of public policy are included in the Pennsylvania common law public policy exception to the at will employment doctrine. Second, it establishes that the Bonham holding was predicated not on a narrow view of Pennsylvania common law, but on the panel’s mistaken belief that the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission remedy is exclusive.
There is, therefore, a Pennsylvania common law cause of action for termination of at will employment for reasons which violate a legislative public policy determination. None need be “implied,” as the majority suggests. The question is not whether there is such a cause of action, but a narrower one; whether the public policy proscribing discrimination against the handicapped is one of the public policies which limit the at will employment doctrine.
The majority’s reasons for rejecting that public policy as a limitation on the at will *924employment doctrine are to me completely illogical. Recognizing that the public policy exception is established in the Pennsylvania caselaw, the opinion observes that none of the cases involved a statement of public policy in a statute also embodying a private enforcement scheme. From this the conclusion is drawn that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania would, in applying the public policy exception, disregard a policy announced in such a statute. The flaws in such reasoning are obvious. There is no reason to suppose that any court would attach less significance to a public policy announced in such a statute than to a public policy determined by the court itself, or to one embodied in a statute providing no private enforcement scheme. Indeed, absent a legislative determination that the statutory private remedy should be exclusive, the opposite inference of legislative intention is far more logical. Thus, what is left is a contrived effort to read section 955(b) of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Act as if it provides an exclusive remedy even when, as here, it has not been invoked. As the Fye court states unequivocally, that is not what section 955 says. Fye overruled Bonham, and this panel may not in a diversity case follow the latter. Perks, not Bonham, is the controlling Third Circuit precedent, and this panel may not disregard it.
Thus, I would reverse the judgment dismissing Mr. Bruffett’s complaint that his at will employment was terminated in violation of the Pennsylvania public policy against discrimination against the handicapped, and remand for further proceedings.

. The applicable section, Pa.Stat.Ann. tit. 43, § 962(b) (Purdon Supp.1982), is quoted in note 1 of the majority opinion. See, e.g., N.Y. [Executive] Law § 300 (McKinney 1982).

 The findings and declaration of policy set forth in the first section of the Act states [sic] in part:
The practice or policy of discrimination against individuals or groups ... is a matter of concern of the Commonwealth. Such discrimination foments domestic strife and unrest, threatens the rights and privileges of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, and undermines the foundations of a free democratic state. 43 P.S. § 952 [Supp. 1978-79]

. It was once accepted that the common law rule was constitutionally protected. Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161, 28 S.Ct. 277, 52 L.Ed. 436 (1908); Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1, 35 S.Ct. 240, 59 L.Ed. 441 (1915). That primitive view does not survive. NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937).

. Cases and statutes are collected in J. Bar-bash, J.D. Feerick, & J.B. Kauff, Unjust Dismissal and At Will Employment (1982).

. Members of the Committee on Labor and Employment Law are:
Jerome B. Kauff, Chairman
David N. Brainin Samuel Estreicher
Wilbur Daniels Alex J. Glauberman
Florence Dean Murray A. Gordon
E. Thayer Drake Lewis B. Kaden
Alfreida B. Kenney-Harrell Stanley Schair
Everett E. Lewis O. Peter Sherwood
Martin Markson Edward Silver
Rosemary Page Carole Sobin
Bertrand B. Pogrebin Janet Maleson Spencer
Harold Richman Stephen Spivak
John Eliot Sands Roy N. Watanabe
Robert H. Sand Beverly Wolff