Groce v. Foster
| Decision Date | 12 July 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 78068,78068 |
| Parties | , 128 Lab.Cas. P 57,727, 9 IER Cases 1287, 9 IER Cases 1768, 1994 OK 88 William GROCE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bob FOSTER and Midwestern Services, Inc., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
Patrick J. Malloy III, Malloy & Malloy, Inc., Tulsa, and Leslie V. Williams, Jr., Earl H. Remmel, Williams & Remmel, Oklahoma City, for appellant.
In an action against an oilfield service company and its owner for wrongful termination of employment the District Court, Oklahoma County, Leamon Freeman, Judge, granted the employer's dismissal quest for failure to state a claim. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Certiorari was granted upon the employee's petition.
THE COURT OF APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED; THE TRIAL COURT'S DISMISSAL ORDER IS REVERSED AND THE CAUSE REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS NOT INCONSISTENT WITH THIS PRONOUNCEMENT.
Michael L. Darrah, Christopher J. Bergin, Huckaby, Fleming, Frailey, Chaffin & Darrah, and Clell I. Cunningham, III, Miller, Dollarhide, Dawson & Shaw, Oklahoma City, for appellees.
This certiorari proceeding tenders an issue of first impression--whether, under the limited public-policy exception to the termination-at-will doctrine, first announced in Burk v. K-Mart Corporation, 1 a wrongful discharge action will lie against an employer who fires an employee for the latter's refusal to dismiss his common-law negligence action against a third party, who was a customer of the employer, for redress of on-the-job injuries. We answer in the affirmative.
Recovery is sought for tortious discharge from employment in violation of this State's public policy. 2 The defendants [appellees] are Midwestern Services, Inc. and its owner, Bob Foster [collectively called Foster or employer]. Their former employee, plaintiff below [appellant], is William Groce [employee or Groce].
Groce, while working for his employer (an oil field service company) at a wellsite, was helping employees of Hydraulic Well Control, Inc. [Hydraulic] hoist a pipe when he suffered bodily harm. According to Groce, Hydraulic employees, while operating a rig, negligently dropped a pipe on his foot.
While Oklahoma jurisprudence has long adhered to and continues to retain the American employment-at-will doctrine, 9 Burk 10 adopted a narrow tort-based exception. Its scope is limited to a circumscribed class of cases in which the discharge is shown to be contrary to a clear mandate of public policy that is articulated by constitutional, statutory or decisional law. 11 In the context of the public-policy 12 exception, the employer is free to advance all of its legitimate interests except those which may collide with the employee's rights that are explicitly shielded by law.
The Burk exception had been foreshadowed in Hinson v. Cameron, 13 where we identified five public-policy areas in which wrongful-dismissal claims may be actionable. These are an employee's discharge for (1) refusal to participate in an illegal activity; (2) performance of an important public obligation; (3) exercise of a legal right or interest; (4) exposure of some wrongdoing by the employer; and (5) performance of an act that Groce urges Art. 2, § 6, Okl. Const., 15 the so-called Open-Court-of-Justice Clause, gives him a constitutional right to forensic redress of his bodily harm against the responsible party and makes wrongful any dismissal for exercising one's right to bring a § 44 suit for a third party's negligence. 16 The employer, who counters that Groce has not met his burden to show that a clear mandate of legislative or judicially recognized public policy has been violated, seeks to persuade us that the constitutional command for open access to the courts (a) is directed only to those who administer legal process rather than to private individuals, (b) was framed to provide for equality in the administration of legal process, and (c) creates neither a new private right nor claim. According to the employer, because Groce's third-party negligence action against Hydraulic is still pending, his denial-of-court-access complaint must fail. 17
public policy would encourage or refusal to do something that public policy would condemn, when the discharge is coupled with a showing of bad faith, malice or retaliation. 14
These arguments of the parties overlook the full statutory implications of the employer's conduct which are central to our consideration of the case. In an at-will employment setting the relationship between the employer and employee is contractual or promise-based--express or implied. 18 The employer, to avoid assumed economic detriment to itself, would read into Groce's employment contract an implied covenant that would preclude the employee from pursuing any claim for bodily harm caused on the job by the tortious acts of an employer's customer. Rejecting today this notion advanced for the employer's position, we hold that a discharge in retaliation for the worker's refusal to abandon his/her § 44 lawsuit against a third party to redress an on-the-job injury impermissibly interferes with the legally protected recovery regime for those who suffer work-connected harm. It is hence in breach of the law's declared public policy.
Today's decision does not make actionable a discharge for employee resistance to all forms of employer-practiced economic intimidation. Far from it. What the court must and does condemn as a breach of declared policy is forcing one's employee to choose between keeping a job or pressing a statutorily protected § 44 claim for legal redress of an on-the-job injury. 19 No matter how economically advantageous this conduct may be to the employer, an employee cannot be compelled, directly or obliquely, to bear the loss of his/her on-the-job harm. 20 Having to give Since every employee enjoys explicit legislative protection from discharge for laying claim to compensation against his/her very own employer, 22 with what modicum of persuasion may the employer argue today that it is consistent with public policy to fire one who for the same on-the-job harm presses a statutorily authorized § 44 action against a third party 23--an utter stranger to the traditionally required bond of loyalty between the master and servant? To condition a job on the employee's abandonment of that legislatively-bestowed benefit is no less a breach of public policy than making employment dependent upon the employee's willingness to commit perjury. 24
up any part of one's claim in the face of an employer's threat of discharge is just as repugnant to the expressed public policy as is being forced into paying or contributing to the employer's compensation liability insurance premiums. 21 In both instances it is the employee to whom the cost of on-the-job harm would be impermissibly shifted. That which the law prohibits the employer from exacting contractually may not be secured with impunity through naked intimidation
Lastly, Foster's attempt to coerce Groce into withdrawing his claim against Hydraulic [the third party] clearly offends the articulated statutory policy that makes the entire legal recovery regime for a worker's on-the-job injury subject to the Workers' Compensation Court's exclusive jurisdiction over settlements and other agreed dispositions. 25 The Workers' Compensation Act 26 explicitly confers upon that court supervisory powers over all agreements reached between the injured employee and either his/her employer or the responsible third party. To countenance an employer's coercing its employees into relinquishing their claims for redress of work-related harm has the effect of defeating the Workers' Compensation Court's supervision of the process and contravenes the stated legislative policy. The employer's insistence on Groce's dismissal of his negligence claim is hence in breach of a public policy articulated in 85 O.S.1991 §§ 5-7, 12, 44-47 and 84.
DISMISSAL UNDER 12 O.S.1991 § 2012(B)(6)
FOR FAILURE TO STATE A CLAIM UPON WHICH RELIEF
COULD BE GRANTED WAS IMPROPER UNDER THE
FACTS PLED BY THE EMPLOYEE.
A pleading must not be dismissed for failure to state a legally cognizable claim unless the allegations indicate beyond any doubt that the claimant can prove no set of facts which would entitle it to relief. 27 If the
facts alleged in Groce's petition were proved, the termination in question would constitute a tortious discharge within the narrow Burk-announced public-policy exception to the employment-at-will doctrine.
THE FALLACY OF THE DISSENT
The mandates of an articulated public policy are drawn from the body of a jurisdiction's constitutional, statutory, and decisional law. 28 The court's pronouncement today places its reliance on that public policy which is articulated by 85 O.S.1991 §§ 5-7, 29 12, 44-47, and 84. It is divined from these sections considered in combination rather than singly....
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