Legal Risk and Opportunity in Employment

Legal Encounter 1:

There’s wrongful discharge issue arises from the reading “Legal Encounter 1.” Wrongful discharge can arise under three circumstances: violation of a statute (discrimination), breach of contract or a tort action involving bad faith or torturous discharge. This paper will identify issues, the rules to apply for those issues followed by the analysis and conclusion of this case.

Issue: Was Pat terminated wrongfully for the breach of contract by Newcorp?

Rules: Pat was employed at the will of the employer who does not need to provide any reason for termination as long as the termination is not discriminatory based on sex, religion, origin, age or disability (B. Samuelson, Business Law, 2007.) The employment at will can be terminated at any time and without any notice or reason. However, there’re some exceptions to the employment at will: breach of implied contract, promissory estoppel, and public policy. In this case, the personnel manual could form an implied contract:

• if indicates that an employer will follow particular procedures prior to terminate an employee

• if there’s no written disclaimer that guidelines and policies in personnel manual do not create contract rights.

Analysis: Newcorp’s personnel manual clearly indicates that, if the job performance of an employee is unsatisfactory, the employee will be notified of the deficiency and placed on a Corrective Action Plan. If the employee performance does not improve to a satisfactory level within the specified period, termination will follow (Legal Encounter 1, University of Phoenix, 2009.)

Conclusion: According to the analysis, Pat has right to claim for the wrongful termination for the breach of implied contract. In this case, the Personnel Manual is considered as a contract and Newcorp did not follow its own company policy and did not notified Pat about deficiency; neither presented him to the Corrective Action Plan.

From the other hand, Newcorp could prevent from breach of the...