The Employment-At-Will Doctrine

Summarize the employment-at-will doctrine discussed in the text and then evaluate three (3) of the six (6) scenarios described. The employment-at-will doctrine is a legal rule that allows employers to fire employees for any or no reason at all. According to the text this legal rule developed in the nineteenth, providing theoretic support for employment-at-will doctrine. The economic philosophy is mainly based on the legal foundation of freedom of contract. The philosophy is based on the idea that people have the right to dispose of everything they own including employees and the intended contractual promises they made is legitimately enforceable. As the recently hired Chief Operating Officer in the process of preparing for an

Grubb that non-employer may sue for wrongful discharge if Virginia public policy has been violated. Virginia and many other states employment-at-will doctrine that means employers can fire employees for any reason or no reason at all. There are some exceptions to this rule applicable to contractual employees. These employees can only be fired for a cause making it very difficult to dismiss employees whom they have entered into a contractual agreement. In order to do so there has to be concrete proof of gross misconduct. Most employees are not contractual but they can prevail in a wrongful discharge case if they qualify for certain exceptions. The first exception is the convent of good faith exception. The covenant of good faith states that the promise of good faith and fair dealing in the employment relationship meaning that employer decisions are subject to just cause standards, highlighting that bad faith or malice terminations are

Virginia recognizes public policy exception to at-will employment, but they do not recognize implied contract or good-faith dealing exceptions. In the state of Virginia employers can fire employees for any on no reason at all, unless the employment contract stipulates otherwise or there is a public policy exception, where an employee fired for reasons that jolt Virginia public policy. Public policies like race discrimination, resistance to the employer’s sexual harassment, and so one. Then an employee may sue for wrongful discharge regardless of the at-will rule. There is no doubt that the public policy exception is quite restrictive. Recently the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia held in Shomo v. Junior Corp, decided based on the influential case of Bowman v. State Bank of Keysville, that public policy exceptions are applied only if an employer interferes with the employees use of a statutorily created right. Or when the employer violates a statute that creates public policy that was intended to protect a specific class of people which the employee is a member, or when a employee is terminated for refusing to participate in a criminal act. In the case of Shomo v. Junior Corp. where a federal court applying Virginia law held that a waitress who alleged that she was fired because she refused to terminate her