Lawrence Chrysler Plymouth Corp. v. Brooks, 950568

• Decision Date: 12 January 1996
• Docket Number: No. 950568,950568
• Citation: 465 S.E.2d 806,251 Va. 94
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: , 11 IER Cases 523 LAWRENCE CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH CORPORATION v. Okey H. BROOKS, Jr. Record

Page 806

465 S.E.2d 806

251 Va. 94, 11 IER Cases 523

LAWRENCE CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH CORPORATION v. Okey H. BROOKS, Jr.

Record No. 950568.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

Jan. 12, 1996.

Bradley P. Marrs (Meyer, Goergen & Marrs, on brief), Richmond, for appellant.

David R. Simonsen, Jr. (Vickey A. Verwey, on brief), Richmond, for appellee.

Present: CARRICO, C.J., and COMPTON, STEPHENSON, LACY, HASSELL and KEENAN, JJ., and WHITING, Senior Justice.

HASSELL, Justice.

In this appeal, we consider whether a former employee at-will has a cause of action for wrongful discharge against his former employer.

Okey H. Brooks, Jr., filed his motion for judgment against Lawrence Chrysler Plymouth Corporation. Brooks alleged that he was fired by Lawrence Chrysler because he refused to perform certain repairs on a car and that his termination violated the public policy of this Commonwealth. Lawrence Chrysler repeatedly argued in the trial court that Brooks does not have a cause of action for wrongful discharge because he was an employee at-will, and his termination did not contravene any enunciated public policy of Virginia.

The trial court rejected Lawrence Chrysler's assertions, and a jury returned a verdict of $90,000 in favor of Brooks. The trial court required the plaintiff to remit a part of his recovery, reduced the verdict to $50,000, and entered a judgment thereon. Code § 8.01-383.1. We awarded Lawrence Chrysler an appeal.

We will review the evidence and all reasonable inferences arising therefrom in the light most favorable to Brooks, who comes to this Court armed with a jury verdict confirmed by the trial court. Brooks was employed as a body shop repairman for Lawrence Chrysler. Lawrence Chrysler relied upon Brooks to repair cars in a safe manner.

In March 1992, Lawrence Chrysler's body shop manager, Glenn Fowlkes, requested that Brooks repair a car that had sustained rear end damage. Fowlkes directed Brooks to repair the car by utilizing a procedure described as "clipping" or "sectioning." Brooks described his conversation with Fowlkes as follows:

[Glenn Fowlkes] asked me to cut the car in half and--which the short term they call is clipping. Cut it in half through the floors, through the rocker panel and through the windshield posts. Roll away that half and go to the junkyard and get another half and put to that front part and try to weld it together.

Brooks believed that this method of repair was unsafe. Brooks testified:

[W]hat they [were] asking me to do was cut the car in half and cut all your major panels and all the floor panels, in which the floor panels have all your stress conductors. They are crush points designed in this car to crush if this car is wrecked. If it's hit again, if I had repaired it the way I was asked, I would be destroying all that area.

Lawrence Chrysler's general manager fired Brooks because he refused to repair the car as instructed. ^*

Lawrence Chrysler asserts that Brooks, who admits he is an employee at-will, does not have a legally cognizable cause of action against it. Brooks contends that even though he is an employee at-will, Lawrence Chrysler wrongfully discharged him in violation of Virginia's public policy and that "the public policy of Virginia need not be found in an express statutory command." We disagree with Brooks.

Virginia strongly adheres to the common-law employment-at-will doctrine. We have repeatedly stated:

"Virginia adheres to the common-law rule that when the intended duration of a contract for the rendition of services cannot be determined by fair inference from the terms of the contract, then either party is ordinarily at liberty to terminate the contract at will, upon giving the other party reasonable notice.

An employee is ordinarily at liberty to leave his employment for any reason or for no reason, upon giving reasonable notice, without incurring liability to his employer. Notions of fundamental fairness underlie the concept of mutuality which extends a corresponding freedom to the employer."

Lockhart v. Commonwealth Education Systems, 247 Va. 98, 102, 439 S.E.2d 328, 330 (1994) (quoting Miller v. SEVAMP, Inc., 234 Va. 462, 465, 362 S.E.2d 915, 916-17 (1987)); accord Bowman v. State Bank of Keysville, 229 Va. 534, 535, 331 S.E.2d 797, 798 (1985); Stonega Coal and Coke Co. v. Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co., 106 Va. 223, 226, 55 S.E. 551, 552 (1906).

This rule is not absolute, and we have recognized certain very narrow exceptions. In Bowman v. State Bank of Keysville, supra, we permitted at-will employees of a bank to prosecute causes of action for wrongful discharge against their former employer, State Bank of Keysville. The Bank allegedly fired the employees, who owned shares of the Bank's common stock, because the employees ultimately failed to vote in favor of the Bank's proposed merger. We held that the employees had pled valid causes of action in tort for improper discharge from employment. The alleged discharges violated the public policy of the Commonwealth as enunciated in former Code § 13.1-32, now Code § 13.1-662, which conferred upon the employees as stockholders the right to vote. We stated:

Because the right conferred by [Code § 13.1-662] is in...