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Murcott v. Best Western International8/31/2000
doing to supervisors is adequate to satisfy the whistle-blowing requirements). Further, his report to Evans at least allowed management the chance to address actual wrongdoing or clear up antitrust misunderstandings at the outset. A contrary conclusion would have prevented Murcott from making his case to anyone in the company, thereby foreclosing any possibility of an internal resolution. We are unwilling to place Murcott or any other employee in such a position.
Best Western also contends that a complaint to outside legal counsel fails to support a whistle-blowing claim and that discussions with Sundlof were unremarkable because he was Best Western's outside legal counsel. Because Sundlof was required to represent the company, the argument goes, he was not in a position to take corrective action.
The upshot of this argument is that employees cannot carry reports about possible antitrust violations to company counsel best equipped to deal with them. Such a policy would discourage employees from consulting legal counsel. We reject this argument for this reason.
Equally unavailing is Best Western's argument that Murcott's failure to report the company's activities to outside authorities impairs his claim. In Wagner the court approved a cause of action for an internal complaint by the police officer discharged for questioning the unlawful detention of an arrested person. See 150 Ariz. at 89, 722 P.2d at 257. Like the trial court, we are persuaded that such claims deserve protection.
The rationale for this approach was best described in Sullivan v. Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co., 802 F. Supp. 716 (D. Conn. 1992), where the plaintiff alleged that he was discharged because he complained about insider-trading of securities. The defendants argued that the claim failed because the plaintiff never reported any alleged violations to outside authorities. In rejecting this argument, the court explained salutary reasons for protecting internal whistle-blowing activity:
This rule makes sense. A rule that would permit the employer to fire a whistleblower with impunity before the employee contacted the authorities would encourage employers promptly to discharge employees who bring complaints to their attention, and would give employees with complaints an incentive to bypass management and go directly to the authorities. This would deprive management of the opportunity to correct oversights straightaway, solve the problem by disciplining errant employees, or clear up a misunderstanding on the part of the whistleblower. The likely result of a contrary rule would be needless public investigations of matters best addressed internally in the first instance. Employers benefit from a system in which the employee reports suspected violations to the employer first ...
Id. at 725 (citing Norris v. Lumbermen's Mut. Cas. Co., 881 F.2d 1144, 1453 (1 st Cir. 1989) (employer liable for discharge of employee because of his purely internal complaints of violations of Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations)).
e. Murcott Reported New Violations Of Company Rules.
Best Western further attacks the trial court's ruling by arguing that whistle-blowing claims do not extend to reports of known violations. Relying upon a Minnesota court of appeals case, it argues that the mere mention of a suspected violation already acknowledged by one's employer does not constitute a report under that state's whistle-blower statute. See Donahue v. Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner & Kluth, P.A., 586 N.W.2d 811, 813-14 (Minn. Ct. App. 1998). Based upon this analogy, Best Western apparently concludes that Murcott failed to whistle-blow and therefore his cl
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