Legal Risk and Opportunity

Legal Risk and Opportunity in Employment

Tenysha Brown

LAW/531

July 10, 2010

Brian Strayer

Legal Risk and Opportunity in Employment

The following encounters involve NewCorp being presented with legal issues brought about from different employees. A brief summary is given describing the situation and pointing out NewCorp’s liabilities. Each liability pointed out is supported with legal principles and statutory or case laws relevant to the situation.

Legal Encounter 1

This scenario involves NewCorp relocating Pat and his family so that he could fill the position as manager of real property in Vermont. Pat supervised several employees, lower level management, and dealt with tenants leasing commercial space. After only a few months Pat was discharged with 30 days of severance pay, but no previous indication of problems. Upon employment, Pat was given NewCorp’s personnel manual outlining steps for dealing with unsatisfactory employees which stated: employees’ would be notified of the deficiency and placed on a corrective action plan; if there is no improvement to the satisfactory level within the specified period, the employee would be terminated. Pat also signed a document showing he understood that NewCorp observed employment at will (University of Phoenix, 2010).

What liability does NewCorp have?

This is an unfortunate situation for NewCorp because they are liable for wrongful termination through a breach of implied contract. Although Pat signed a document stating he understood the company observed employment at will with respect to discharge, the corrective action plan described in the personnel manual was controversial to the “at will” document.

Muhl (2001) wrote an article stating the three exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine. One of those exceptions was the implied contract exception which is “applied when an implied contract is formed between employee and employer (Muhl, 2001).” In recent court findings, contents in...