COA finds fired highway worker was at-will employee

Echoing precedent, the Indiana Court of Appeals has found that an employee handbook is not an employment contract.

Daniel Harris was fired from the Orange County Highway Department after he allegedly consumed alcohol then drove a highway department truck. Harris filed a complaint against Orange County but the Orange Circuit Court granted summary judgment to the defendants.

On appeal, Harris argued he was wrongfully terminated because he was not an at-will employee. The highway department’s Handbook of Personnel Policy contained job security promises that constituted a unilateral employment contract requiring the county to have just cause to fire him, he said.

The Court of Appeals disputed his assessment about what the handbook contained. It pointed to provisions that employees would be immediately dismissed for failing to adhere to the highway department’s code of ethics and that employees could be discharged immediately without notice for misconduct.

“The overwhelming emphasis of the Handbook’s provisions is that employment at the Highway Department is ‘at-will’ and that dismissal may occur ‘immediately,’” Judge Rudolph Pyle wrote for the court. “… Harris attempts to distinguish the Handbook from past precedent by nothing that it does not contain a disclaimer, as the Handbook in (Orr v. Westminister Village North, Inc., 689 N.E.2d 712, 717 (Ind. 1997)) did, nor a definition of ‘at-will’ employment. Regardless of those factors, however, the Handbook’s stipulations that employment is ‘at-will’ and may be terminated ‘immediately’ indicate that it did not make a clear promise that Harris’s employment would be terminated only for just cause.”

The Court of Appeals affirmed in Daniel Harris v. Donald Brewer, Donald Crockett, and Thomas Lamb, Orange County Commissions as governing body of the Orange County Highway Department, 59A05-1501-CT-37.