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Good Neighbors Are Good Public Policy
A recent case from West Tennessee widened, ever so slightly, the scope of the retaliatory discharge exception to Tennessee's employment-at-will doctrine. It also provided evidence that not all terminations for violations of company policy are defensible.
In Little v. Eastgate of Jackson, LLC (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 24, 2007), Plaintiff Little worked as an at-will employee of Defendant Eastgate, a discount beer and tobacco store in Jackson. While at work, Little witnessed a woman being physically assaulted across the street. Little took a baseball bat from under the counter and confronted the woman's assailant, who fled the scene. Two days later, Eastgate terminated Little because he had left company property to aid the woman, because "this was none of [Eastgate's] business," and because Eastgate "cannot be put in this kind of liability situation."
The Court of Appeals held as an issue of first impression that Little's retaliatory discharge claim implicated a clear public policy of the State—the policy of encouraging citizens to rescue others reasonably believed to be in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. The Court reasoned that this public policy is manifest in various Tennessee criminal statutes, which protect otherwise prohibited conduct in certain circumstances, such as the use of force when necessary to protect the life of another. The Court concluded, however, that its holding constituted a narrow exception to the at-will doctrine (as opposed to the adoption of a broad "Good Samaritan" rule) because this public policy extended only to the rescue of those in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. |
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