The Utah Supreme Court held oral argument September 3, 2014 on whether an employee's right to defend one's self constitutes an exception to that state's employment-at-will doctrine. The case is
Ray, et al. v. Wal-mart, No. 20130940.
As most are probably aware, the employment-at-will doctrine allows an employer to fire an employee for any reason subject to certain public policy exceptions such as race, gender, etc. Utah will decide whether the right to defend one's self is one such public policy exception. The actual case is in federal district court which certified the state law question to the Utah Supreme Court which accepted it for review. Some state high courts have this mechanism and some do not.
At any rate, it appears six different employees were fired after three unrelated incidents. A news story briefly describes the three incidents. Here is one of them:
Quote:
In a January 2011 incident at a Wal-Mart in Layton, three employees confronted a man who had put a laptop computer down his pants and escorted him to a security office. There, the man showed them a gun and, the employees claim, pushed it into one of their backs.
The three grabbed the gun away and pinned him against a wall before police arrived. They were fired because Wal-Mart said they should have allowed the man leave the office and not wrestled with him.
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http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58...fired.html.csp. I won't quote the story about the other two incidents in order to keep within TFL's policies.
To my knowledge this is the first presumably-to-be-published opinion which would address this issue which has come up for discussion on this forum from time to time. It might also have broader implications. For example, I have hypothesized a theory where a landlord could not restrict a tenant's right to possess a firearm based upon the right of defense being fundamental and the refusal of courts to enforce a provision against public policy -- but that is getting the cart way before the horse.
From the news story, there appears to be at least one justice leaning in each direction.
October 23, 2014, 11:41 AM
