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Truchan v. Condumex6/21/2002
t articulated in Toussaint.
In Toussaint, the Court articulated a principle of "sweeping generality." The Court said that: While an employer need not establish personnel policies or practices, where an employer chooses to establish such policies and practices and makes them known to its employees, the employment relationship is presumably enhanced. The employer secures an orderly, cooperative and loyal work force, and the employee the peace of mind associated with job security and the conviction that he will be treated fairly. No pre-employment negotiations need take place and the parties' minds need not meet on the subject; nor does it matter that the employee knows nothing of the particulars of the employer's policies and practices or that the employer may change them unilaterally. It is enough that the employer chooses, presumably in its own interest, to create an environment in which the employee believes that, whatever the personnel policies and practices, they are established and official at any given time, purport to be fair, and are applied consistently and uniformly to each employee. The employer has then created a situation "instinct with an obligation."
This "legitimate expectations" subcategory is certainly not based upon traditional contract analysis, and the Court rather quickly began to define its limits. In Rowe v Montgomery Ward, Justice Riley stated:
But unless the theory has some relation to the reality, calling something a contract that is in no sense a contract cannot advance respect for the law. Thus, we seek a resolution which is consistent with contract law relative to the employment setting while minimizing the possibility of abuse by either party to the employment relationship.
The Court then held that it should use an objective test, "looking to the expressed words of the parties and their visible acts."
The Court took a similar approach in Rood v General Dynamics Corporation. There, in dealing with the legitimate expectations subcategory, the Court used a two-step analysis derived from Toussaint, examining first what, if anything, the employer has promised, and second whether the promise, if made, was capable of instilling a legitimate expectation of just-cause employment.
Once again, we emphasize that the legitimate expectations subcategory created in Toussaint deals explicitly with situations revolving explicitly around wrongful discharge claims. This is not such a situation. Nevertheless, the analytical approach contained in Toussaint and refined in Rowe and Rood remains helpful. Here Condumex, in its handbook, set out a policy designed " o financially assist a permanently laid-off associate during his/her search for new employment." On its face, this policy would not apply to plaintiffs; each of them had obtained new employment while still with Condumex and, thus, was not engaged in a "search for new employment."
Moreover, the severance pay policy, as Condumex notes, states that one of three events, coupled with a specific pre-condition, must occur before it becomes effective. The three events were (1) "economic conditions," (2) "changes in technology," or (3) "other unforeseen circumstances." The pre-condition was a "personnel reduction in force (lay-off)." The first of the three events, "economic conditions," was, at least in the trial court's view, at issue here. The trial court, logically, restated this event as requiring that there must be a "change in economic conditions." The trial court then essentially found that the transfer of Condumex's Livonia operation to the company's offices in Arlington, Texas constituted such a "change in economic conditions." We see nothing in the record
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