Caster v. Hennessey

• Decision Date: 23 March 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-5193,83-5193
• Citation: 727 F.2d 1075
• Parties: 115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3452, 100 Lab.Cas. P 55,451, 1 Indiv.Empl.Rts.Cas. 1742 Paul CASTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas F. HENNESSEY and St. Mary's Hospital, Defendants-Appellees. Non-Argument Calendar.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1075

727 F.2d 1075

115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3452, 100 Lab.Cas. P 55,451,

1 Indiv.Empl.Rts.Cas. 1742

Paul CASTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas F. HENNESSEY and St. Mary's Hospital, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 83-5193.

Non-Argument Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

March 23, 1984.

Steven M. Kramer, Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiff-appellant.

Gibson & Gibson, P.A., Herbert C. Gibson, Victoria F. Peet, West Palm Beach, Fla., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, RONEY and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

The sole issue presented on this appeal is whether a grievance procedure in an Employee Manual constitutes a written provision of an employment contract in Florida. A Florida court having decided that it does not, we affirm the directed verdict against the plaintiff employee in this diversity suit based on breach of contract.

Plaintiff, Paul E. Caster, was fired from his position as Fiscal Services Director at St. Mary's Hospital, a private, non-profit corporation. He filed suit against the hospital asserting various claims arising from his termination. Although the district court granted a directed verdict for defendant on all five counts of the complaint, this appeal addresses only the plaintiff's claim that the hospital breached a written employment contract. ¹ Plaintiff signed no written contract with the hospital. He argues, however, that his employment when viewed in conjunction with the hospital's Employee Manual was governed by a written contract. Plaintiff asserts the hospital breached this contract when the grievance procedure set forth in the manual was not followed in plaintiff's termination.

Plaintiff was offered employment by the hospital in a letter dated September 24, 1975. Five days later, plaintiff accepted the offer by return mail and started work in November, 1975. Neither letter contained a definite term of employment.

In addressing plaintiff's claim that he entered into a written agreement in 1975 evidenced by defendant's written policy manual concerning its employees, the district court noted that

[T]he evidence is uncontradicted and quite clear that the manual in question, the one that is in evidence as Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 12, was not printed until July of 1977.

Assuming that the provisions of that manual are identical to those that were previously in effect, the fact remains that Mr. Caster did not receive a copy of this employment manual until September of 1976, which was well after the commencement of his employment.

The court then cited the following quote from Johnson v. National Beef Packing Company, 220 Kan. 52, 551 P.2d 779 (1976):

"Moreover, as previously pointed out, the manual was not published until long after plaintiff's employment. It was only a unilateral expression of company's policies and procedures. Its terms were not bargained for by the parties and any benefits conferred by it were mere gratuities. Certainly, no meeting of the minds was evidenced by the defendant's unilateral act of publishing company policy."

The district court then held that in Florida, unless the employment contract specifically provides for a definite term of employment or the term is established by custom, the employment is considered to be indefinite and terminable at the will of either party. Roy Jorgenson Associates, Inc. v. Deschenes, 409 So.2d 1188, 1190 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1982); DeMarco v. Publix Super Markets, Inc., 360 So.2d 134, 136 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1978), cert. denied, 367 So.2d 1123 (Fla.1979). The district court found that "the grievance procedures contained in the employment manual could be exercised at the discretion of the defendant" and were not, by these terms, binding on either party.

Nonetheless, plaintiff contends that the hospital is bound by the grievance procedures set forth in its Employee Manual. Plaintiff relies heavily on Toussaint v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield, 408 Mich. 579, 292 N.W.2d 880 (1980) spending eight pages of a sixteen page brief in single space quotation from that case. Toussaint held that a Blue Cross personnel manual setting forth a disciplinary procedure and prohibiting firings except for just cause presented a jury issue as to express agreement or the employees' legitimate expectation. Apparently failing to properly shepardize that case, neither plaintiff's nor defendant's counsel cited to this Court a Florida case, decided after the district court decision here, which specifically rejects Toussaint. In Muller v. Stromberg Carlson Corp., 427 So.2d 266 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1983) the employee, recognizing that his employment arrangement did not contain enforceably specific terms relating...