At-will Employment - Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing Exceptions (aka. "Implied-in-law" Contracts)

Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing Exceptions (aka. "Implied-in-law" Contracts)

See also: Quasi-contract

Only eleven U.S. states have recognized a breach of an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing as an exception to at-will employment. These 11 states are:

  • Alabama
  • Alaska
  • Arizona
  • California
  • Delaware
  • Idaho
  • Massachusetts
  • Montana
  • Nevada
  • Utah
  • Wyoming

This exception for a covenant of good faith and fair dealing represents the most significant departure from the traditional employment-at-will doctrine. Rather than narrowly prohibiting terminations based on public policy or an implied contract, this exception – at its broadest – reads a covenant of good faith and fair dealing into every employment relationship. It has been interpreted, by some courts, to mean either that employer personnel decisions are subject to a “just-cause” standard or that terminations made in bad faith or motivated by malice are prohibited.

Read more about this topic:  At-will Employment

Famous quotes containing the words covenant, faith, fair, dealing and/or exceptions:

    “Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first- born of the world are the competitors.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Some of the offers that have come to me would never have come if I had not been President. That means these people are trying to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former President of the United States. I can’t make that kind of use of the office.... I can’t do anything that might take away from the Presidency any of its dignity, or any of the faith people have in it.”
    —Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    “Boy, you’ll have a fair trial. Race, creed or color, justice will be done in my courtroom.”
    —Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)

    “The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
    —Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    “... people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)