Paul Payne v. Jan W. Rozendaal; Albert Trepanier v. Jan W. Rozendaal

Summary

The Vermont Supreme Court held that discharging at-will employees solely because of their age violates a clear and compelling public policy of Vermont, supporting a common law wrongful discharge action even though no statute prohibited age discrimination at the time of the 1980 discharges, and that the later-enacted statutory remedy did not preempt that claim. It reversed summary judgment for the employer defendants and remanded for reconsideration of the dependent emotional-distress, wrongful-death, and loss-of-consortium claims. The Court affirmed the denial of dismissal or summary judgment on the tortious-interference claim against the consultant defendants, because justification is an affirmative defense whose existence is generally for the jury. Justice Peck dissented, arguing that 21 V.S.A. §§ 495 and 495c preserved the employer's common law right to discharge at-will employees regardless of age and that the majority retroactively created illegality and misapplied Mitchell v. Aldrich to the retained consultant.