Present: All the Justices
APRIL L. DRAY
OPINION BY JUSTICE A. CHRISTIAN COMPTON
v. Record No. 981767 September 17, 1999
NEW MARKET POULTRY PRODUCTS, INC.
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY
John J. McGrath, Jr., Judge
This is another case in which an employee seeks to create
an exception to the Commonwealth's established employment-at-
will doctrine in order to pursue a common-law claim for wrongful
discharge.
In August 1997, appellant April L. Dray, the employee,
filed a motion for judgment against appellee New Market Poultry
Products, Inc., the employer, seeking damages for alleged
wrongful termination of her employment. The employer filed a
demurrer, which the trial court sustained in a May 1998 "Opinion
and Order." The employee appeals.
Because a demurrer, which tests the legal sufficiency of
the motion for judgment, admits the correctness of all material
facts that are properly pleaded, we shall recite the facts set
forth in the motion for judgment as if they are true.
The employee worked for the employer from August 1994 until
she was "fired" on September 11, 1996. For about three months
prior to her termination, the employee was a "quality control
inspector" on the employer's production lines to assure that no
adulterated poultry products were distributed.
Two months prior to her termination, the employee
"experienced difficulty" in getting other employees to follow
proper sanitary rules. "When management ignored and failed to
correct the noted deficiencies," the employee, "in conformance
to her training and assigned duties . . . , informed the plant's
on-site governmental inspectors." The inspectors "confirmed the
unsanitary conditions," according to the allegations, and
"forced" the employer to correct the deficiencies.
Subsequently, the employee was told by her supervisor "that she
would be fired if she ever again brought plant sanitary
deficiencies to the attention of the . . . governmental
inspectors."
In the week prior to the employee's termination, she and
other quality control inspectors condemned as adulterated some
poultry products based on improper work performed on the plant's
"wash line." On the day of the employee's termination, a
government inspector required the employer to "reprocess a large
quantity of poultry product due to contamination by metal-laced
ice."
The employer's management believed that the employee had
informed the government inspector of this adulterated product.
She was discharged for violating the "edict" that she not inform
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the inspectors of unsanitary conditions and adulterated poultry
products. When the employee asked the reason for her discharge,
the employer's personnel supervisor informed her that "'it was
not working out.'"
In her motion for judgment, the employee says she "states a
common law claim for wrongful termination of employment in
violation of the public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia."
Elaborating, the employee asserts the public policy relied upon
is articulated by the Commonwealth in the "Virginia Meat and
Poultry Products Inspection Act," Code §§ 3.1-884.17 through
-884.36 (the Act).
She alleges the employer terminated her in contravention of
the public policy she finds set forth in the Act that is
applicable to her. As a result, she asserts, she has incurred
damages for which she seeks recovery.
In sustaining the demurrer, the trial court held that the
motion for judgment did not set forth a legally cognizable claim
for wrongful discharge. The court ruled that the plaintiff had
failed "to extrapolate" from the broad declaration found in the
Act, of an intent to serve "the public good" generally, a
specific public policy intended to benefit the class of
individuals to which the plaintiff belonged. Thus, the court
decided, the employee's claim did not qualify as an exception to
the employment-at-will doctrine. The trial court was correct.
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Virginia adheres to the common-law doctrine of employment-
at-will. When a contract calls for the rendition of services,
but the period of the contract's intended duration cannot be
determined from its provisions, either party ordinarily is at
liberty to terminate the contract at will upon giving reasonable
notice of intention to terminate. Doss v. Jamco, Inc., 254 Va.
362, 366, 492 S.E.2d 441, 443 (1997); Stonega Coal and Coke Co.
v. Louisville and Nashville R.R. Co., 106 Va. 223, 226, 55 S.E.
551, 552 (1906). But, "the rule is not absolute." Bowman v.
State Bank of Keysville, 229 Va. 534, 539, 331 S.E.2d 797, 801
(1985).
In Bowman, we recognized that a number of state courts had
applied exceptions to the rule of terminability. By way of
illustration, we referred to several decisions from other
jurisdictions, e.g., Sheets v. Teddy's Frosted Foods, Inc., 427
A.2d 385 (Conn. 1980), that had granted such exceptions, but we
did not adopt the rationale or exceptions articulated in those
cases. Bowman, 229 Va. at 539-40, 331 S.E.2d at 801.
In Bowman, we applied "a narrow exception to the
employment-at-will rule." Id. at 540, 331 S.E.2d at 801. We
held that two bank employees, who were also stockholders of the
bank corporation, had stated a cause of action in tort against
the bank and bank directors when the employees were discharged
after failing to heed a threat to vote their stock according to
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the wishes of their employer. We said that the public policy
set forth in former Code § 13.1-32 (now § 13.1-662) conferred
upon the plaintiffs as stockholders the right to vote their
shares "free of duress and intimidation imposed on individual
stockholders by corporate management." Id., 331 S.E.2d at 801.
In the present case, the plaintiff seeks to mount a
generalized, common-law "whistleblower" retaliatory discharge
claim. Such a claim has not been recognized as an exception to
Virginia's employment-at-will doctrine, and we refuse to
recognize it today. See Lawrence Chrysler Plymouth Corp. v.
Brooks, 251 Va. 94, 465 S.E.2d 806 (1996) (motor vehicle
repairman unsuccessfully sued employer alleging discharge for
his refusal to use method of repair that he believed unsafe);
Miller v. SEVAMP, Inc., 234 Va. 462, 362 S.E.2d 915 (1987)
(retaliatory discharge claim rejected when employee alleged she
was fired for appearing as witness at co-employee's grievance
hearing).
The Act upon which this plaintiff relies does not confer
any rights or duties upon her or any other similarly situated
employee of the defendant. Instead, the Act's objective is "to
provide for meat and poultry products inspection programs that
will impose and enforce requirements with respect to intrastate
operations and commerce." Code § 3.1-884.19.
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The plaintiff identifies two of the Act's provisions that
she says articulate a public policy allowing her to evade the
employment-at-will doctrine. She relies upon Code § 3.1-884.22,
which forbids intrastate distribution of uninspected,
adulterated, or misbranded meat and poultry products. She also
relies upon Code § 3.1-884.25(2), which establishes criminal
penalties for any person who "resists, . . . impedes, . . . or
interferes" with state meat inspectors. These provisions do not
secure any rights to this plaintiff, nor do any other provisions
of the Act. Rather, the Act establishes a regulatory mechanism
directed only to government inspectors and industry management.
In essence, the plaintiff claims she has been wrongfully
terminated because she had a right to disregard management's
requirements that she report to her company superiors, and not
directly to government inspectors, when she believed she was
acting to assure the safety of the employer's products.
However, the Act affords plaintiff no express statutory right in
this regard that is in specific furtherance of the state's
public policy regarding inspections of meat and poultry
products.
Consequently, we hold that the trial court did not err in
sustaining the employer's demurrer. Thus, the judgment below
will be
Affirmed.
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