Question: Have any of the employers in the following cases terminated an employee in violation of public policy? Has each employer acted ethically?

a. A grocery store fired an otherwise highly performing cashier with a valid prescription for medical marijuana after he failed a random drug test. As required by the District of Columbia's Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Amendment Act of 2010, the employee had properly registered his prescription with the D.C. Department of Health and received a medical-marijuana card. Prior to taking the drug test, he advised his manager that he used medical marijuana to alleviate the symptoms of glaucoma. [Coles v. Harris Teeter, LLC, 217 F. Supp. 3d 185 (D.D.C. 2016).]

b. Elizabeth M. Stewart was a highly talented salesperson for Cendant Mobility Services Corporation. Stewart's husband was also employed by Cendant as an executive in the operations department. During a major corporate reorganization, Cendant terminated Stewart's husband. Shortly thereafter, Stewart spoke with James Simon, Cendant's executive vice president of sales, regarding her concerns about how her employment with Cendant might be affected if her husband ultimately found employment with a competitor. Simon told Stewart that her husband's employment would have no bearing on her employment with Cendant and that she had no reason to be concerned about her status at Cendant because she was a highly valued employee. On the basis of these assurances, Stewart continued in her position with Cendant and did not pursue other employment opportunities.

Nearly one year after Cendant's reorganization, Cendant learned that Stewart's husband was working for a competitor and subsequently reduced her duties and limited her interaction with clients. Cendant also requested that Stewart verbally agree to a document that purported to delineate her obligations to Cendant in relation to her husband's work on behalf of any competitor of Cendant. When Stewart declined to agree to this document, Cendant terminated her employment. [Stewart v. Cendant Mobility Services Corp., 837 A.2d 736 (Conn. 2003).]

c. Randall Dohme claimed that he was fired by Eurand America, Inc. because he had expressed concerns to outside parties about the safety of the Eurand workplace. In 2002, Dohme had discussed with his neighbor, a captain with the local fire department, the design of a pump Dohme believed had started a fire at the plant. In 2003, he had communicated his workplace-safety concerns to an insurance adjuster who conducted an on-site evaluation of Eurand's facility to assess the building and its operations. Prior to the insurance adjuster's visit, Eurand had sent an interoffice email to all its employees stating that the facility would be inspected by the adjuster and that only the employees identified in that email were to have contact with the adjuster. Even though Dohme was not on the list, he spoke with the adjuster. In his suit against Eurand, he contended that he was terminated because of his "perceived role in an on-site insurance adjuster's discovery of certain violations relative to [Eurand America's] fire alarm system, which ... jeopardized workplace safety and placed employees in [an] unreasonable and dangerous setting." Eurand America claimed that Dohme was terminated for contributing to the violations the adjuster found in his inspection and for insubordination. [Dohme v. Eurand America, Inc., 956 N.E.2d 825 (Ohio 2011).]

d. A nonexempt employee alleged that she was discharged after 30 years of employment with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation because she complained about being underpaid and requested remediation. She also claimed that she was forced to falsify her timekeeping records during her employment at the clinic. [DeMell v. Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 2007 WL 1705094 (Ohio Ct. App. June 14, 2007).]

e. An employee hired as an "environmental/assistant safety manager" complained about La-Z-Boy's handling of injured employees on a number of occasions. Among other incidents, she submitted a memorandum in which she stated that employees' injury claims were being intentionally mismanaged and that the claim adjuster was hostile to employees who filed workers' compensation claims. She also informed the human resources director that the "alternate duty assignments" given to injured employees were demeaning. When she told La-Z-Boy's vice president that an employee had been injured and that his benefits were being improperly denied, she alleged that she was told "she would be fired if she ever talked to any employees about their Workers' Compensation issues or their injuries." Several months later, while she was on maternity leave, she was informed that she had been terminated and her position had been filled. [Touchard v. La-Z-Boy Inc., 148 P.3d 945 (Utah 2006).]

f. Collotype Labels suspended Richard Luke after learning that he had lied about having his position covered when he took time off. While he was suspended, Luke sent an email to a Collotype manager in another office, entitled "trouble brewing," that related to various complaints raised by a number of Collotype employees. The next day, Collotypeterminated Luke's employment for insubordination and provided him with a termination memorandum stating that one of the reasons for his termination was that he had been soliciting signatures for a letter denouncing the company's management. [Luke v. Collotype Labels USA, Inc., 72 Cal. Rptr. 3d 440 (Ct. App. 2008).]