Court Opinion

ID: 9547083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:41:31.804746+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:18.097539
License: Public Domain

LIVERMORE, Presiding Judge,
specially concurring.
There are additional reasons on the facts of this case why no award for impairment of future earnings should be made. Any time an employee is fired or not retained there is necessarily a negative inference. If the employee were truly able an employer would retain him. Because the employer did not, he must not be truly able. That fact of life ought not to permit an award of damages. To hold otherwise might require employers to retain less than able employees because at some future time a jury might conclude that termination violated some implicit duty of good faith not to think badly of the employee.
Additionally, the conduct of the University in terminating Lindsey in breach of an oral contract to retain him for four years did not impair his future earning capacity. That capacity was impaired by Lindsey’s coaching record. The University’s act did no more than recognize what already was publicly obvious — Lindsey’s year at the University was unsuccessful. There is, it seems to me, no obligation of good faith to treat what is plainly true as false.
Lindsey, the jury found, was entitled to be paid his salary for four years plus those consequential losses, money for shoe contracts and basketball camps, normally associated with coaching. That is all to which he was entitled when the contract was breached.