Conatser v. Clarksville Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

• Decision Date: 26 June 1995
• Docket Number: COCA-COLA
• Citation: 920 S.W.2d 646
• Parties: Eric CONATSER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The CLARKSVILLEBOTTLING COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 646

920 S.W.2d 646

Eric CONATSER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The CLARKSVILLE COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

June 26, 1995.

Robert Clive Marks, Marks, Shell, Maness & Marks, Clarksville, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Frank J. Runyon, II, Clarksville, for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

REID, Justice.

In this suit for retaliatory discharge, the trial court granted the employer's motion for a directed verdict at the conclusion of the employee's proof. The Court of Appeals also rejected the employee's insistence that the evidence established a prima facie case of retaliation imposing upon the employer the burden of showing a non-pretextual reason for the employee's discharge. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Prior to sustaining a work-related injury, the employee, Eric Conatser, worked for the appellee, The Clarksville Coca-Cola Bottling Company, for approximately four months in 1986 as a helper to a soft drink route salesman. His job was unloading cases of soft drinks from a truck and depositing the products inside retail stores.

On June 2, 1986, the employee sustained minor injuries when he and some cases of soft drinks fell from the truck he was unloading. He was treated at a hospital emergency room and released. He was relieved from work by his physician until June 23, 1986, and was paid workers' compensation temporary total disability benefits for the two and one-half weeks during which he was unable to work.

For three days after the employee returned to the job, he worked on a truck with the route foreman rather than the route salesman with whom he had worked previously. At the end of the third day, the foreman told him that his employment was being terminated because he was not physically able to do the work required by the job.

During the time that he was employed, the employee was not given a uniform worn by regular employees, which indicated that his employment was on a trial basis. According to the employee's testimony, his work performance was never discussed with him by his route salesman, the foreman who terminated his employment, or any other employee of the company. The only evidence submitted by the employee was his testimony and a copy of a Tennessee Department of Employment Security decision, which recites a finding that the employee "was discharged because his employer felt he was not physically strong enough to perform his job after returning to work following an on-the-job injury." The employee offered no evidence, not even through his own testimony, that he was able to perform the work required by the job. The record contains no other material evidence.

Rule 50 of the Rules of Civil Procedure provides that "a motion for a directed verdict may be made at the close of the evidence offered by an opposing party...." The standard for granting the motion has been established by court decisions.

In ruling on the motion, the court must take the strongest legitimate view of the evidence in favor of the non-moving party. In other words, the court must remove any conflict in the evidence by construing it in the light most favorable to the non-movant and discarding all countervailing evidence. The court may grant the motion only if, after assessing the evidence according to the foregoing standards, it determines that reasonable minds could not differ as to the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence.

Eaton v. McLain, 891 S.W.2d 587, 590 (Tenn.1994).

"On review of the grant of a directed verdict on motion of a defendant, it is not the office of an appellate court to weigh the evidence. Rather, it must take the strongest legitimate view of the evidence in favor of the plaintiff, indulging in all reasonable inferences in his favor, and disregarding any evidence to the contrary. The trial judge's action may be sustained only if there is no material evidence in the record that would support a verdict for the plaintiff, under any of the theories that he has advanced."

Williams v. Brown, 860 S.W.2d 854, 857 (Tenn.1993) (quoting Cecil v. Hardin, 575 S.W.2d 268, 271 (Tenn.1978)).

The issue then is whether the record contains any material evidence supporting the essentials of the cause of action alleged, that the employment was terminated because the employee asserted a claim for benefits under the workers' compensation law.

With significant exceptions, an employee or an employer may terminate an employment-at-will relationship at any time, with or without good cause. Forrester v. Stockstill, 869 S.W.2d 328, 330 (Tenn.1994); Chism v. Mid-South Milling Co., 762 S.W.2d 552, 555 (Tenn.1988). The first exception to this rule was recognized by the Court in Clanton v. Cain-Sloan Co., 677 S.W.2d 441 (Tenn.1984), in which the Court held that an action in tort for retaliatory discharge is available to a person whose employment has been terminated for asserting a claim for workers' compensation benefits ¹. In that case, the Court stated:

In our opinion, a cause of action for retaliatory discharge, although...