Smith-Pfeffer v. Superintendent of the Walter E. Fernald State School

• Decision Date: 16 February 1989
• Docket Number: SMITH-PFEFFER
• Citation: 404 Mass. 145,533 N.E.2d 1368
• Parties: , 51 Ed. Law Rep. 1035, 4 IER Cases 289 Judith M.v. SUPERINTENDENT OF THE WALTER E. FERNALD STATE SCHOOL. 1
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 1368

533 N.E.2d 1368

404 Mass. 145, 51 Ed. Law Rep. 1035,

4 IER Cases 289

Judith M. SMITH-PFEFFER v. SUPERINTENDENT OF THE WALTER E. FERNALD STATE SCHOOL.¹

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Middlesex.

Argued Nov. 10, 1988.

Decided Feb. 16, 1989.

Despena Fillios Billings, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Carolyn V. Wood, Asst. Atty. Gen., with her) for defendant.

Peter G. DeGelleke, Carlisle, (Laurence S. Boisvert, Belmont, with him), for plaintiff.

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and LIACOS, ABRAMS, NOLAN and O'CONNOR, JJ.

ABRAMS, Justice.

At issue is whether the termination of the plaintiff's at-will employment by the defendant was in violation of public policy, thus, subjecting the defendant to liability. A jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff. The defendant appeals, claiming that the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, is insufficient, as a matter of law, to warrant a verdict for the plaintiff. We transferred the case to this court on our own motion. We agree with the defendant that he was entitled to a directed verdict or, in the alternative, the allowance of his motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. ² We reverse and remand to the Superior Court for entry of a judgment for the defendant.

We summarize the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Cort v. Bristol-Myers Co., 385 Mass. 300, 301, 431 N.E.2d 908 (1982). The plaintiff began work on September 2, 1979, as unit director for the Greene Unit at Walter E. Fernald State School (Fernald), a facility for the mentally retarded operated by the Department of Mental Health. She was an at-will employee. Before that time, she had worked at Belchertown State School, initially as a student intern, and then for nearly four years as unit director for the medical unit, serving severely retarded and physically handicapped clients. The plaintiff received her doctorate in 1979 in exercise science. ³

The Greene Unit, the largest unit at Fernald, served approximately 130 to 140 of the most severely handicapped clients. When the plaintiff took over as unit director, there were some twenty-four vacancies among the direct-care staff (charged, among other things, with feeding and bathing clients and changing their diapers). The building was badly infested with cockroaches and lacked adequate housekeeping staff. Shortly after the plaintiff began work, she was obliged to coordinate moving about fifty-five clients from the main Greene Unit building to a different facility, Metropolitan State Hospital (Metropolitan), which was two miles away. The plaintiff continued to be responsible for the clients who were moved to Metropolitan, and had to divide her staff between the two facilities. Metropolitan, too, was unsanitary and had inadequate heat and hot water. At the time the plaintiff took over at the Greene Unit, Fernald was in danger of being decertified by the Department of Public Health, both because of the poor physical plant and because of lack of programming and insufficient staffing to meet the clients' needs.

The plaintiff earned the praise of the defendant, who was then acting superintendent at Fernald, for the progress she made in addressing the Greene Unit's problems. By February, 1980, the plaintiff had succeeded in filling the approximately twenty-four vacancies in the direct-care staff, had moved clients and staff to Metropolitan with a minimum of disruption and bad feelings among the staff, and had helped to draft an interim correction plan addressing the deficiencies that the Department of Public Health had criticized in its survey of Fernald facilities. The defendant told the plaintiff in January, 1980, that the Greene Unit had made progress and that the plaintiff had a very good chance of getting an "upgrading" in position. The deputy superintendent rated the plaintiff in her six-month review as outstanding in management and problem solving, and over-all as being in the top ten per cent of unit directors he had known.

The plaintiff and the defendant came into conflict, however, over the question of the reorganization of Fernald. In the fall of 1979, the defendant had several meetings with all the unit directors at Fernald, including the plaintiff, in which the defendant presented his plan for centralizing the power at Fernald and concentrating it in the hands of the superintendent (himself) and the assistant superintendent. The plaintiff and her fellow unit directors opposed the plan because it gave the unit directors, who had primary contact with the direct care and professional staff, no opportunity to participate in policy decisions. The unit directors submitted an alternate plan to the defendant in writing sometime in December, 1979, but the defendant refused to consider it.

The plaintiff and one other unit director, as representatives of the group, then met twice with the defendant in a more personal, less confrontational way, to try to explain the unit directors' stance on the reorganization plan. The defendant stated at those meetings that he would listen to the unit directors' views but that his plan was nonnegotiable.

Following these meetings, the unit directors wrote, as a group, to the search committee charged with finding a permanent superintendent for Fernald, expressing their view that the defendant should not be given that position. The letter alleged that the defendant "lack[ed] ... educational and experiential preparation for the position of superintendent.... After requesting and then rejecting input from unit directors, he unilaterally created a plan which would radically, and, in our opinion, disastrously, alter the management structure of the institution ... [and] compromise service delivery to the residents." The unit directors considered the defendant's "exclusion of middle management in major policy making as a serious indictment of his ability" as an administrator. All nine of the unit directors at Fernald, including the plaintiff, signed the letter.

The unit directors, the department heads, and the defendant met again immediately after the letter was submitted to the search committee. At that point, the defendant undertook to try for the next month to be more attentive to the unit directors' views. One month later, on April 2, 1980, the unit directors and the defendant met again to discuss whether there had been any improvement in the relationship between the defendant and the unit directors. The plaintiff was called away for much of the meeting and so did not hear what the others had said. When she returned to the meeting, she said that, "although there [had been] attempts [at improvements, she] had seen no substantial changes from [her] unit's perspective." The defendant commented at that point that the plaintiff's statement (or conclusion) was "probably because of [their, i.e., the plaintiff's and the defendant's] special problem." He did not elaborate.

Shortly thereafter, the defendant informed the plaintiff that if she did not resign, she would be discharged on April 26, 1980. He gave as his reason his "dissatisfaction with [her] administrative performance." The plaintiff wrote to the defendant on April 25, asking for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. The plaintiff was dismissed on April 26, 1980.

In his brief, the defendant concedes the following facts: "[T]he plaintiff performed her duties in a superior manner and ... was discharged by the defendant, not because of poor job performance, but because she was a signatory to the ... letter which was highly critical of [the defendant] ... for her criticisms of his administrative abilities, and for her vocal and persistent leadership of the unit directors in opposing his reorganization plan. The jury could have found that [the] plaintiff's actions were motivated by a sincere commitment to the mentally retarded residents in her unit. The jury could have inferred that the defendant terminated her employment to get rid of an employee he regarded as a trouble maker, and one with whom he personally did not get along." The plaintiff argues that, in light of the facts showing her to be a dedicated, competent public servant, her dismissal violates public policy and entitles her to redress from the defendant. We do not agree.

"Employees have an interest in knowing they will not be discharged for exercising their legal rights. Employers have an interest in knowing they can run their businesses as they see fit as long as their conduct is consistent with public policy. The public has an interest in employment stability and in discouraging frivolous lawsuits by dissatisfied employees." Pierce v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., 84 N.J. 58, 71, 417 A.2d 505 (1980). Consistent with these different interests, we have permitted redress for at-will employees based on public policy in some circumstances. Redress is available for employees who are terminated for asserting a legally guaranteed right (e.g., filing workers' compensation claim), for doing what the law requires e.g., serving on a jury), or for refusing to do that which the law forbids (e.g., committing perjury). See Gram v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 384 Mass. 659, 668 n. 6, 429 N.E.2d 21 (1981), S.C., 391 Mass. 333, 461 N.E.2d 796 (1984), citing Pierce v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., supra at 84 N.J. 67-70, 417 A.2d 505, and cases collected therein. In DeRose v. Putnam Management Co., 398 Mass. 205, 496 N.E.2d 428 (1986), we held that public policy protects an employee who is dismissed for refusing to heed his...