Running Head: Employment-At-Will Doctrine
1
Employment-At-Will Doctrine
Assignment#1
LEG 500
Assignment 2: Employment-At-Will Doctrine
Imagine you are a recently-hired Chief Operating Officer (COO) in a midsize company
preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). You quickly discover multiple personnel problems
that require your immediate attention.
1. John posted a rant on his Facebook page in which he criticized the company’s most
important customer.
2. Ellen started a blog to protest the CEO’s bonus, noting that no one below director has
gotten a raise in two (2) years and portraying her bosses as “know-nothings” and “out-of-
touch”
3. Bill has been using his company-issued BlackBerry to run his own business on the side.
4. After being disciplined for criticizing a customer in an email (sent from his personal
email account on a company computer), Joe threatens to sue the company for invasion of
privacy.
5. One of the department supervisors requests your approval to fire his secretary for
insubordination. Since the secretary has always received glowing reviews, you call her
into your office and determine that she has refused to prepare false expense reports for
her boss.
6. Anna’s boss refused to sign her leave request for jury duty and now wants to fire her for
being absent without permission.
Introduction
Since the 19th century, America’s employment philosophy has traditionally been what is
referred to as employment-at-will. It basis is found on two of America’s enduring founding
structures. For example, the laissez-faire concept of the free market philosophy, and the
traditional principle of democracy—of personal liberty as embodied in the constitution. As two
sides of the same coin, the free-market and the constitution, each in its own way views the
employer/employee relationship to be on equal a footing. By definition, "employment-at-will is a

Running Head: Employment-At-Will Doctrine
2
legal rule…giving employers’ unfettered power to 'dismiss their employees for good cause, no
cause, or for cause morally wrong, without being guilty of legal wrong (Ingulli, 2012).’” By the
same token employees also have the free will to choose to terminate their employments with
their employers for no cause, or for good cause, or for cause morally wrong without any
obligation.
But the seemingly unfettered power at the disposal of employers to terminate the employment of
employees at will, which some people particularly the trade unions, had variously characterized
as exploitative, inhumane and unfairly stacked against employees has not been so unfettered after
all. Overtime, some major exceptions to employer’s right to fire at-will have since been
gradually introduced into this arrangement. As of the 1950s, at least four major exceptions to
employment-at-will which are deemed to be adversely disparaging to employees have been put
in place by way of America common law tradition, and tort law. Most notable and adopted in all
50 states among these exceptions is the one which prohibits termination actions taken against an
employee for either not participating or reporting a violation of a state policy or local ordinance.
Then there is the exception which prohibits as a basis for termination, race, age, gender, national
origin and disability. Another exception that is enforced nation-wide is the one that places a
prohibition on termination in which an implied—orally, by employer handbook, or a concretely
stipulated contract has been reached. Finally although not all, but majority of the state’s project
into employment-at-will, an implied covenant of good faith to the effect that terminations could
be only for good cause—not done in bad faith.
At this point, I now proceed to deal with the myriad of personnel problems that await my
attention as a recently hired in my hypothetical position as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of a
midsize company. Before reacting to any of the problems on hand I would first undertake a

Running Head: Employment-At-Will Doctrine
3
careful study of what the company’s policy stipulates as to what course of action could be taken
in the breach of company’s policy in reference to the cases before me. In addition I would take a
thorough look at the specific law that pertain to each case to avert the possibility of law suits
filed against the company for wrongful termination.
1. John posted a rant on his Facebook page in which he criticized the company’s most
important customer.
Clearly, whatever his reason is, John’s behavior in regard to publicly criticizing the company’s
customer irrespective of the customer’s status or the medium he uses to level his criticism at the
customer, is unprofessional, counterproductive and unbecoming of his status as company’s
employee. But before I come to a decision regarding John’s fate with the company, I would
conduct an exhaustive investigation as to what drove him to take the action he took howbeit
unjustifiable as it is. To this end, let us assume that John has some clout in the company probably
an expert of sort. In that case we can also assume that John may be privy to information of
impropriety involving this particular customer. If that is the case, it may be reasonable to further
assume that he may have broached the matter to senior management to no avail, and probably as
a last resort, decided in frustration to self-appoint him a whistleblower and go public on
Facebook to rant against this customer. Not to prolong this issue further, the end result of my
pursuit is to establish whether or not John had a legitimate concern regarding what he has against
this customer could potentially violate public policy. If it does, even though John’s method
simply violates every reporting policy in everyone’s book, I cannot take disciplinary action
against him since indeed under the law, whistleblowers who point the finger at violations of state
policy regardless of the method they use are protected against reprisal. If on the other hand the
matter about which John ranted against the company’s most important customer has nothing to

LEG 500 Employment-At-Will Doctrine Assignment 1

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