Court Opinion

ID: 9564439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:00:45.657213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:24.599702
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
It is the established employment law in this state that the at-will presumption may be rebutted by an employee’s showing that “there was an express or implied contract between his employer and himself that his employer would fire him only for cause.” American Bank Stationery v. Farmer, 106 Nev. 698, 701, 799 P.2d 1100, 1102 (1990). Today this court places an unprecedented and unwarranted impediment in the way of wrongfully discharged employees who seek to enforce their contractual rights to continued employment. Employees who set out to prove the existence of express or implied contracts with their employers in the future will henceforth be put to an added burden of proof and must “supply some corroboration that a contract has been formed.”
The majority opinion places employment contracts into a category of their own and imposes special, added restrictions and requirements of proof upon workers. The majority does not, and cannot, give a reason why employment contracts should not be treated like any other contracts or why workers should have the added burden of furnishing corroboration in order to establish their contractual rights.
*840“[A]n employer may expressly or impliedly agree with an employee that employment is to be for an indefinite term and may be terminated only for cause . . . D’Angelo v. Gardner, 107 Nev. 704, 712, 819 P.2d 206, 211 (1991). “We have called this a contract of ‘continued employment,’ a contract which an employee can enforce in accordance with its terms.” Id. It used to be, before the filing of this opinion, that an employee, like any other contract litigant, could prove a case in contract simply by testifying under oath that a certain agreement had been entered into. Before this case was decided, workers were competent to take the witness stand and establish, on their own, without corroboration, their contractual rights, by testifying under oath that their employer had contracted with them that they would not be dismissed unless they failed in some way to perform the duties of employment. The trier of fact was free to accept or reject a worker’s testimony on face value. Now things are different. Workers now go into a contract action against their employers at a considerable disadvantage — they must, unlike all other plaintiffs in contract actions, furnish corroboration of their own sworn testimony.
“The testimony of a witness is said to be corroborated when it is shown to correspond with the representation of some other witnesses, or to comport with some facts otherwise known or established.”1 Now, in order for a worker to prevail in an employment contract lawsuit against an employer, the worker must be able to furnish “some other witness” who was present when the contract was entered into or must produce evidence of “known or established facts” which “correspond” to the worker’s testimony. Mr. Yeager, the employee in the present case, did not, of course, have any way of knowing when he filed his lawsuit that this court was going to impose this extra burden of proof upon him, based solely upon his status as an employee. Mr. Yeager obviously had no way of knowing that he was not going to be considered competent to pursue a contract action against his employer unless he was able to bolster his own, sworn testimony with some kind of corroborating evidence. Mr. Yeager had no reason to suspect that this court would impose this handicap on contract claimants who also happen to be employees; and it does not seem fair to me that he should lose his day in court because of a newly-instituted requirement of proof that was imposed upon him after he filed suit. At the very least, this case should be remanded in order to give Mr. Yeager an opportunity to present any corroboration that he might have.
Yeager was hired by Harrah’s Club, Inc. almost thirty years *841ago. He testified under oath that representations were made to him by corporation executives, at the time of his hiring, that his “employment would only be terminated for cause.”2 He also testified that at the time he was employed, it was the policy of Harrah’s, instituted by then president of Harrah’s, William Harrah, not to hire people on an “at-will” basis but, rather, as employees who would “only be terminated for cause.” He further testified that Harrah’s had “agreed” and that it was “understood by the employees and by the management” that he was a “part of Harrah’s that, unlike other casinos in town” had a “policy” which “provided that people who were hired at Harrah’s casino were hired as career employees who would be retained and who would not be terminated except for specifically enumerated cause, pursuant to the policies set forth in Harrah’s handbook.”
Yeager advances a very strong and coherent case for the existence of a contract of continued employment. In accordance with Harrah’s employment policies at the time Yeager was employed, there was an exchange of promises between Harrah’s management and Yeager that could be accepted by a fact finder as creating a contract of continued employment, a contract that protected Yeager from arbitrary dismissal and required that Harrah’s dismiss him only if he “did something wrong to jeopardize” his job. (See footnote 2.)
I strongly disagree with the harsh and discriminatory “corroboration” rule that this court now imposes on workers who sue their employers in contract actions. Further, it is clear to me that, irrespective of the corroboration rule, Mr. Yeager has made ouit a prima facie case and is entitled to his day in court. I would reverse the summary judgment.
Given the wording of the employees’ handbook and the nature of Harrah’s Club employment policies that were in place some thirty years ago, I consider it quite probable that a fact finder would conclude that Yeager, and other employees hired at the time he was, were in fact hired under a contract of continued *842employment under which they must be retained until they retired or violated their employment contract by misconduct or failure to perform their duties. Yeager categorically testified that, at the time he was hired, management promised him and continued to assure him that he was entitled to “lifetime employment.” Harrah’s promised him that he would be employed until he retired or “unless [he] did something wrong to jeopardize that.” (See footnote 2.) The contract is well-established by Yeager’s testimony; all that is missing is corroboration. Yeager (unaware that this court was going to issue this strange ruling) did not offer any corroborative evidence during the summary judgment proceedings. Although Yeager could establish any other kind of contract with Harrah’s without corroboration, his employment contract cannot be sustained under our present ruling solely because he did not present corroborative evidence during the summary judgment proceedings.
Nevada now becomes the only state in the nation that puts this burden on its employees. The majority concedes that this court is indeed “imposing special restrictions on an employee” who is asserting contractual rights against an employer but maintains that such “restrictions” are necessary in order to limit the employee’s “unfettered right to sue.” Under today’s ruling workers’ rights to sue are very much fettered by a newly-invented “restriction” that is not imposed on other contract claimants in civil contract suits. Workers have a new burden that other litigants do not have to carry. Workers who sue their employers in job-related matters are faced with a new “restriction” on their right to sue. Workers must bring with them to court something that other claimants need not bring; they must come equipped with some additional proof to show that they are not lying. If they do not or cannot provide this additional proof, they are thrown out of court, as is Mr. Yeager today.3
*843Naturally, the majority provides us with no case authority4 for the proposition that employees should have a restricted or “fettered” right to sue on their employment contracts. Harrah’s itself did not attempt to argue to the court such an outlandish proposition, and the novel doctrine promulgated by the majority in this case was conjured by the court, acting on its own. I do not have any idea where this “corroboration” doctrine might have come from; but it seems clear to me that it gives undue advantage to employers and treats employees in an unfair and discriminatory way. I could not possibly join in such a ruling; therefore, I respectfully dissent.

Black’s Law Dictionary 311 (5th ed. 1979).

On cross-examination by Harrah’s attorney, Yeager was asked: “Did anyone promise you that you would have a job for a certain number of years?” Yeager, of course, never claimed that his employment contract was for a “certain number of years”; nonetheless, he responded to the question by saying that certain, named persons in managerial positions had made definite promises to him. “Rome Andreotti said several times to me that I’d be at Harrah’s until I retired . . . .” William Harrah, Bob Contois and Mert Smith, all in high managerial positions, had told Yeager that he had “lifetime employment” and that “unless [he] did something wrong to jeopardize that, where [he] would be terminated if [he] stole, or something like that.” Mr. Yeager testified: “I considered that a promise when — if you didn’t get out of line and did your job.”

Justice Rose makes the suggestion that Vancheri v. GNLV Corp., 105 Nev. 417, 777 P.2d 366 (1989), provides authority for the novel proposition that an employee cannot sue his employer on a contract of employment unless the employee can provide corroboration to support his or her testimony concerning the existence of an employment contract. There is, of course, nothing in Vancheri that is inconsistent with the position that I take in this dissent. The plaintiff in Vancheri did not even come close to establishing a contract of employment. Mr. Vancheri was trying to rely on gratuitous statements by his employer that he was welcome “to the family” and that “he would have a great future” with the company. Id. at 421, 111 P.2d at 369. Mr. Vancheri offered no proof, as in the case now before us, of an actual agreement between his employer and him; rather, his claim was merely that he had relied on the mentioned remarks by his employer in deciding to take up a new job with the GNLV “family.” This court quite properly and unanimously held that Mr. Vancheri’s subjective reliance or “ ‘understanding’ that the employment was for a fixed period” was insufficient to support a *843contract. “Contracts of employment cannot be created by the subjective expectations of an employee.” Id. (citations omitted). The court noted in Vancheri that absent “independent evidence” of the “terms of an employment contract,” Mr. Vancheri’s contractual claims must be dismissed. Id. I do not see how “independent evidence indicating the terms of an employment contract” can mean anything other than evidence of an oifer and acceptance, evidence of an exchange of promises, or evidence that somehow established that there was an actual agreement between the parties rather than merely a unilateral, subjective understanding on the part of only one of the supposed contractors. The quoted language most certainly neither states nor implies that employees are not competent to enforce their contracts of employment unless they are able to support their sworn testimony with corroborative evidence. That the majority should rely on Vancheri as authority for the proposition that employees must provide corroboration in all employment contract cases severely diminishes the credibility of the majority opinion and has the effect of further weakening rather than strengthening the unique and unfortunate holding today embraced by Justice Rose and a majority of this court.

The majority cites no case in which an employee’s sworn narration of circumstances evidencing an employment contract must be rejected unless the employee can furnish corroboration to support his or her sworn testimony. The majority cites only cases in which indefinite oral statements by employers were properly held to be insufficient to support the formation of a contract which would overcome the at-will presumption. For example, I have no quarrel with the proposition that “general assurances of an ongoing working relationship are not sufficiently definite so as to rebut the at-will presumption.” Evans v. GTE Health Systems, Inc., 857 P.2d 974, 977 (Utah Ct. App. 1993), aff’d, 878 P.2d 1153 (Utah 1994). As I have stated in the previous note, I have no quarrel with Vancheri-type rulings in which it is held that mere, unilateral assurance will not support a contract of continued employment. These kinds of cases are far removed from the case at hand. Here the only thing that prevents Mr. Yeager from prevailing in his contract action is his innocent failure to present corroborative evidence during the summary judgment proceedings.