McDonald
v. Mobil Coal Producing, Inc.
Supreme
Court of
820
P.2d 986.
Facts: McDonald worked for
Mobil. He got fired, or was supposedly
forced to resign, due to rumors of sexual harassment. McDonald sued Mobil, claiming that his
employee handbook constituted a contract and that Mobil was in breach. The trial court granted summary judgment to
Mobil, and McDonald appealed. The Wyoming
Supreme Court reversed and remanded to see if promissory estoppel applied to
the situation. Then Mobil made a motion
for rehearing and that’s how the case came before the court this time.
Issue: Did the employee handbook,
along with the course of conduct between Mobil and McDonald modify the at-will
nature of McDonald’s employment?
Rule: Disclaimers must be
conspicuous in order to be effective against employees.
Analysis: The court looks at the
disclaimers that McDonald got, and finds that they are inadequate to prevent
confusion. The handbook itself didn’t
say that it wasn’t binding on the employer, and a reasonable person could get
confused and think that it was. The disclaimers
are held to not be binding on McDonald.
Then
the court talks about the objective versus subjective interpretation
issue. It doesn’t matter if Mobil didn’t
subjectively intent to make a contract with McDonald if a reasonable person in
McDonald’s shoes would think that Mobil did make a contract. So the court has to decide whether there’s
any possibility that a reasonable person could think such a thing. If there is, then the question should be
allowed to go to a jury.
The
court finds that McDonald was led to believe that Mobil would be bound by its
own employee handbook procedures in dealing with the harassment
allegations. Instead, Mobil thought it
had retained the right to fire McDonald at any time for any reason.
There
is a concurring opinion and two dissents.
The concurring opinion says the court should say as a matter of law that
Mobil’s employee handbook constituted a legally binding promise from Mobil to
McDonald and that the only issue for the trial court should be Mobil should
have been forbidden from firing McDonald without cause.
One
dissent says that there’s nothing more that Mobil could have done to make the
employee know that they didn’t intend to enter an employment contract. This dissent says that the court’s decision
could conceivably outlaw at-will employment, and that this is bad from a policy
standpoint.
The
other dissent says that in the previous hearing of the case, the issue was
whether promissory estoppel could apply, but now the issue is whether the
employee handbook is a binding contract.
This dissent says that there is no contract. I think this dissent kind of rejects
Restatement § 90 for some reason. Well,
actually § 90 doesn’t use the word “contract”.
I guess what this dissent is saying is that the majority is getting
mixed up between the meaning of “contract” and the meaning of “promise”.
Conclusion: The court reverses summary judgment
and remands to find out whether the at-will employment of McDonald got
modified.