Mobil Coal Producing, Inc., a Delaware Corporation, Appellant (defendant) v. Dale Parks, Appellee (plaintiff)

Summary

The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a judgment awarding damages to a mine technician discharged primarily for safety violations, holding that the employer's employee handbook — with its list of unacceptable conduct, requirement of cause, and five-step progressive-discipline procedure — set forth rules and regulations having the force of a contract that negated at-will employment, and that the employer did not substantially comply with that procedure because the final-step discharge rested on an incident that preceded the fourth-step suspension. The court also found the employer had followed the handbook's notice-and-comment steps, making any separate inquiry into pretermination hearing requirements unnecessary. Justice Rose specially concurred, agreeing with the result but objecting that the majority's statement that at-will discharge violates no implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing is unsupported by the cited cases, which had left that doctrine unresolved.