Common Law Impact Wrongful Termination Claims
In most jurisdictions, employment is “at-will,” meaning that an employee may be terminated at any time for any reason. But terminations that violate a state’s public policy are considered wrongful and may be prohibited by laws prohibiting discrimination, retaliation or other actions that offend a specific moral or ethical principle. Those laws are called the common law. In most cases, a legal claim for wrongful termination requires two things: the employee must have been terminated for a statutory violation and the termination must have been motivated by bad faith, retaliation or malice. The vast majority of states recognize a “public policy” exception to at-will terminations, although state courts differ widely on the scope and validity of these exceptions.
The core principles of common law are enshrined in judicial opinions and thus are more malleable than the hard-line rules of statutes and agency-promulgated regulations. To determine what the law is on a particular issue, attorneys must locate precedents and extract principles, analogies and statements of what the courts consider to be important from these opinions. More recent decisions and decisions by higher level courts are given greater weight than earlier ones. Once all of the lines are drawn, the attorney must extract the law that is applicable to the facts at issue in the case.
Courts in the United States are divided into twelve regional circuits, each with its own court of appeals. Appellate court decisions in one circuit are binding on the district courts in that circuit, and they serve as persuasive authority on sister circuits. Federal court judges also hear certain types of appeals without geographic limitation, such as cases involving the constitutionality of laws and patent-related matters. Those cases do not become binding precedent, but they can be influential.
How Does the Common Law Impact Wrongful Termination Claims?
Judicial precedent is an important feature of a common law system, because past decisions tend to influence future rulings until societal changes prompt the judicial body to overturn them. This system has the advantage of providing reasonably precise guidance on most issues, which helps business parties to plan for the legality of their actions and to have some assurance of consistency in court decisions.
In contrast, most Western countries have civil law systems, which rely on legal codes and do not regard judicial precedent as binding. As a result, drafting pleadings for a civil law case requires careful pigeonholing of the case into one of ten different categories: trover, replevin, detinue, special assumpsit, general assumpsit, delict, trespass or ejectment.
A judicial decision that establishes a common law claim can remain in effect even after a related statutory cause of action is established by statute. Nevertheless, the legislature can choose to repeal a judicial opinion that establishes a common law claim. For example, a judicial decision that establishes a tort claim for wrongful termination in violation of the FEHA prohibition on age discrimination is a significant precedent that can impact how courts apply this statutory cause of action. However, the decision is not binding on courts in other jurisdictions that do not have a similar common law theory.
