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Bauer v. Pottsville Area Emergency Medical Services8/25/2000
ing of the ancient law of master and servant. The servant is required to perform his duties at the discretion of the employer and the law will not involve itself with disputes concerning the terms and conditions of the employment relationship. The master- servant (employer-employee) relationship is, of course, a mutual bargain. The employer may at any time discharge the employee, and, contrariwise, the employee may at any time leave his employment (indentured servitude and involuntary servitude having happily passed into America's past).
The law has recognized in many instances the inequity of the master- servant bargain and has provided remedies to the employee who has been wrongfully terminated and even in some cases to the employee who, while retained, has been ill-treated. Examples abound and include, for example, the right to bargain collectively, Labor Management Relations Acts, Wage and Hours Acts, minimum wage laws, anti-discrimination laws, and equal employment rights laws. These rights, too numerous to catalog, include wrongful discharge lawsuits. It is the contract of employment doctrine and its adjunct, the employee handbook, which often form the basis of wrongful discharge lawsuits. However, by definition, such suits have been limited to those who suffer loss of their employment.
To one still in an employment relationship, the claim simply becomes one of the terms and conditions of employment which is not justicially cognizable absent a statutory or judicially created form of relief. Appellant herein has not been discharged from employment and he furnishes no precedent for the concept of constructive termination which would entitle an employee to the possible rights of one who has been terminated. To the extent, however, that one in appellant's status is entitled to claim the rights of a terminated employee, I disagree with the majority.
An employee may be discharged with or without cause, and our law does not prohibit firing an employee for relying on an employer's promise. Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, 569 A.2d 346, 348 (Pa. 1990). Nor does our law recognize a cause of action for reliance upon a representation in an employee handbook that is not part of a bargained for condition of employment. For this reason, I dissent from the portion of the majority disposition finding that a cause of action in contract for quantum meruit exists based upon the terms of the employee handbook.
An employer's unilateral act of publishing its polices does not constitute the requisite "meeting of the minds" required for a contract. Where the terms of an employee handbook are not bargained for by the parties, any benefits conferred by it are mere gratuities. Richardson v. Charles Cole Memorial Hospital, 466 A.2d 1084 (Pa. Super. 1983) (cited with approval in Morosetti v. Louisiana Land and Exploration Co., 564 A.2d 151, 153 (Pa. 1989)). Unless an employer communicates a policy as part of a definite offer of employment, it is free to alter the policy as it sees fit. Id.
Attempts by this court to carve out exceptions to an employer's ability to disregard a non-bargained for promise as part of a verbal communication or as part of an employee handbook have been met with uniform disapproval by the supreme court. In Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, 543 A.2d 1148 (Pa. Super. 1988), a divided en banc panel of the superior court applied the doctrine of equitable estoppel to allow a discharged employee to maintain a common law action based upon his reliance upon a verbal misrepresentation of the employer. The supreme court reversed and held that the doctrine of equitable estoppel is not an exception to the employment at-will doctrine. Paul v. Lankenau Hospital, 569 A.2d 3
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