Court Opinion

ID: 9482992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:07:18.503227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:20.710517
License: Public Domain

CUMMINGS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I fully concur in Judge Sha-dur’s opinion, the dissent’s mischaracterization of the facts, misstatement of the public policy at issue, and misapplication of Wisconsin precedent compels me to write a brief response.
The dissent implies that this case concerns a lazy employee who used a doctor’s advice to “take it easy” as an excuse for a weekend off. It is striking how little this imagined scenario resembles the actual facts presented in the parties’ stipulated joint appendix. According to those stipulated facts, the computer malfunction at Niagara occurred approximately nine months after Kenneth Wilcox, a thirteen-*366year at-will employee at Niagara, underwent double bypass open heart surgery. Wilcox worked long hours to repair the computer system, from 7:00 a.m. Thursday, March 30, 1989, until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. on Friday, March 31, 1989, and then from 7:00 a.m. on Friday, March 31, 1989, until 9:30 that night. He left the paper mill at 9:30 p.m. after he began to experience angina pains. He was hospitalized overnight due to those pains and was released the next day with his cardiologist’s orders to take’it easy. He did so, even though his employer threatened to fire him if he did not work during the weekend. Certainly a jury could conclude from these facts that to work during that weekend would have been dangerous or prejudicial to Wilcox’s life or health.
The dissent chides: “Where is Wisconsin’s ‘formally stated, fundamental and well-defined public policy’ against long hours?” The dissent admonishes: “Nothing in weekend work is hazardous to an ordinary employee.” The dissent misses the point. The Wisconsin statute at issue states that “No person may be employed or be permitted to work in any place of employment or at any employment for such period of time during any day, night or week, as is dangerous or prejudicial to the •person’s life, health, safety, or welfare (emphasis added).” Wis.Stat. § 103.02. As Judge Shadur aptly notes, this Wisconsin statute “reflects a legislative concern with the health and welfare of employees on an individual rather than a collective basis.” The public policy evinced by § 103.02 does not prohibit “long hours” per se, but instead prohibits an employee from working during a time period that endangers his or her life or health.
The dissent arrives at the wrong result because it takes the wrong approach. The dissent inaccurately asserts that Judge Shadur’s opinion reaches the conclusion that “all risk with ‘some degree of substan-tiality’ violates the law of Wisconsin.” Rather Wisconsin law is violated when an employer terminates an employee for his or her refusal to work during a time that would be dangerous to that person’s life or health. The caveat in Judge Shadur’s opinion that the risk to the employee’s health must be substantial rather than trivial stems from the statutory terms “dangerous” and “prejudicial.”
The dissent states that § 103.02 is “not clear” because it has not been previously interpreted by a state court. Although this logic is dubious, if the dissent truly considered § 103.02 unclear, the appropriate response would be to urge certification of the question to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, rather than to disregard the statute as redundant to Wis.Stat. § 103.85.*
The dissent disregards not just the policy articulated in § 103.02, but Wisconsin’s public policy exception to the employment at will doctrine altogether. It is precisely because “[w]e should take the Supreme Court of Wisconsin at its word” that a stingy application of Wisconsin’s public policy exception is inappropriate. Yes, the Wisconsin cases contain much “restrictive language,” but at least two of those cases nonetheless have held that the employer’s discharge violated Wisconsin public policy. The dissent does not address those holdings. However, the dissent does peruse the holdings in which no wrongful di*367charge was found, in order to conclude that “[g]eneral interests, * * * do not satisfy [the fundamental and well-defined] public policy requirement.” But neither Bushko v. Miller Brewing Co., 134 Wis.2d 136, 396 N.W.2d 167 (1986), nor Schultz v. Production Stamping Corp., 148 Wis.2d 17, 434 N.W.2d 780 (1989), the cases cited by the dissent in support of its conclusion, asserts that broad public policies should be given less weight than narrow policy interests. The Wisconsin Supreme Court based its holdings in those cases on other grounds, as discussed in Judge Shadur’s opinion.
When, by words or spirit, the state articulates a fundamental and well-defined public policy, Wisconsin courts have held that an employee may not be fired for his or her refusal to violate that policy. Wilcox has a valid claim that his employment was terminated on the basis of his refusal to obey a command that his employer was prohibited by statute from giving — a command which would have compelled Wilcox to work during a time period that was prejudicial to his life or health. Niagara wrongfully discharged Wilcox if it discharged him for refusing to work during a time period that would have been dangerous or prejudicial to his life, health, safety or welfare.
The dissent may think that the concern shared by Wisconsin citizens who serve as jurors, and those citizens’ elected representatives — the Wisconsin legislature, for values other than “efficient production,” is unwise. But only the members of the Wisconsin legislature, not members of this Court, can alter the legislation at issue. The dissent may think “concrete rules” more desirable than reference to the public policy articulated in state statutes. But we are a federal court sitting in diversity, with a difficult but limited task — to apply Wisconsin’s doctrines and laws as a Wisconsin court would do. Even if a member of this Court would permit employers to fire at-will employees for any reason, without exception, the Wisconsin Supreme Court disagrees, and their view ends the matter.

 The dissent’s additional suggestion, not raised by the parties' briefs, that § 103.02 "probably is no longer law at all, given the preemptive force of federal statutes," is unpersuasive. National Solid Waste Ass’n v. Killian, 918 F.2d 671, 679 (7th Cir.1990), can be misleading unless quoted in context. “When an OSHA standard exists, and the state has not submitted a section 18 plan, we undertake a two step inquiry. First, we determine whether the challenged state law or regulation constitutes, in a direct, clear, and substantial way, regulation of worker health and safety * * * Second, we attempt to extricate from the state law or regulation and invalidate those provisions that relate to worker health and safety in a direct, clear, and substantial way.” Id. at 679 (emphasis added). This Court has not held that the "general duty clause” of 29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1) is a "standard” that preempts state law. Such a holding would imperil numerous traditional areas of state general health and safety regulation and would seem to subvert 29 U.S.C. § 667(a). "Courts do not * * * lightly attribute to Congress or to a federal agency, the intent to preempt state or local laws,” id. at 676, and such preemption would be extremely ill-advised.