Business Law

NewCorp is currently experiencing three legal scenarios. These legal encounters have relevant regulatory laws, and NewCorp needs an accurate assessment of each legal encounter. As employees of NewCorp, NewCorp is requiring Team B to review the three legal scenarios and provide brief answers to each of its questions on the different encounters. The encounters deal with at-will employment, discrimination, and occupational safety. Our supervisors expect substantive answers and not deferments to legal counsel. Each question can have only a maximum of a 350 word response.

At-Will Employment

Pat has no case in federal court as there is no federal law that he can reference that prevents NewCorp from terminating him. The case of “Payne v Western & A. R.R. Co. (1884) best articulates that the doctrine of employment at will: An at –will employee may be fired for good cause, no cause or even cause morally wrong, without {the employer} being thereby guilty of a legal wrong” (Joseph, 2008, p. 96). That document asserts NewCorp’s right to fire Pat however interpreted the Notice of Unsatisfactory Performance/Corrective Action Plan policy in the employee handbook is a binding employment contract. The case of Small v. Spring Indus.,Inc.,1987 was a case that ruled “An implied contract may override a presumption of at-will employment, altering the employment relationship into one in which the employee may be dismissed only for “just cause” (Joseph, 2008, p. 97).

Examining the NewCorp employee handbook for an implied contract is the responsibility of the state in which the trial will take place. The issue of an implied contract divides the states as some U.S. States “weigh several factors such as the definiteness and comprehensiveness of the policies and the context of the manual’s preparation and distribution” and in other states the handbook is just one item that the state looks at when deciding at-will terminations.

Pat claims senior management was noticeably unfriendly...