Problem
Juanita Hernandez-Canton never imagined she would lose her job at Centrex Electronics Corporation (CEC). Unfortunately, after 6 years of employment, the last 2 as a senior product engineer in CEC's military/space division in Atlanta, Hernandez-Canton made a mistake: she fell in love.
CEC is highly regarded as a quality employer in the electronics industry. It is a multinational corporation with engineering services and production facilities in Spain, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Germany. With more than 12,000 employees in the United States, several studies have named the firm one of the country's top 100 organizations to work for. It is known as a top-paying corporation with proactive employee relations policies.
Kathryn Garner, the vice president of human resources for CEC, is credited with establishing many favorable employee rights policies, including those covering electronic communications, drug testing, search and surveillance, access to employee records, same-sex partner benefits, and off-duty conduct. The corporation allows employees to marry except in cases where one employee is in a direct reporting relationship with the other.
Hernandez-Canton joined CEC shortly after graduating from Georgia State University in 2012. At that time she was married to Tom Canton, her college sweetheart. In 2015, Canton died suddenly. As a single parent, his widow then became dependent upon her job for the majority of her family's support.
Hernandez-Canton enjoyed rapid promotions through various engineering positions. She also had been awarded the firm's Engineering Distinction Award for her research and development work in metallography. But in January 2017, a week after receiving a significant raise, she was called into the firm's HR department. The question from the military/space division manager was clear and direct: "Are you dating Mike Domzalski?" Domzalski was a former CEC senior engineer who in 2015 had gone to work for International Technologies, a direct competitor of CEC. There was no denying the romance. The two had dated while Domzalski was with CEC, and he still remained friends with other CEC engineers. It was widely known among Hernandez-Canton's friends that she was "extremely fond" of Domzalski.
Now, chastised for her involvement, Hernandez-Canton was ordered to forget about Domzalski or be demoted. After the meeting, she told a friend, "I was so socialized in CEC culture and so devoted to the job that I thought seriously about breaking up with Mike." As she later testified in court, however, she never got the chance because she was dismissed the day after the meeting with her manager.
At the root of Hernandez-Canton's dismissal was a corporate policy regarding the leaking of confidential product information. This policy seeks to avoid situations where an employee of CEC might be compromised and forced into providing sensitive or confidential information to an employee of a competing organization. Hernandez-Canton's work in research and development made her subject to the following CEC policy:
Employees performing jobs where they have access to sensitive or confidential information which could benefit competitors are prohibited from being married to or from having a romantic relationship with individuals employed by competing organizations.
Since Domzalski's work at International Technologies was similar to Hernandez-Canton's work at CEC, the corporation believed their "romantic relationship" made her discharge appropriate. Feeling aggrieved, Hernandez-Canton engaged the services of an attorney specializing in employee rights claims. In preparing her wrongful discharge suit, the attorney told her that given the nature of her case, he believed she could win the lawsuit. While gathering background information for the trial, the attorney discovered something that her former division manager did not know. Shortly before her discharge, the chairman of CEC had declared: "CEC employees are responsible for their own off-the-job behavior. We are concerned with an employee's off-the-job conduct only when it reduces the employee's ability to perform normal job assignments."
A jury trial in state court upheld the wrongful discharge suit and awarded Hernandez-Canton $425,000 in back pay and punitive damages. Like all trials, however, this one took its toll on the parties involved. "I couldn't function for 4 or 5 months after the trial, I was so emotionally upset and drained," Hernandez-Canton said. She is now employed as an engineer for a medical-device maker; she and Domzalski are no longer dating. "It was a bad experience all around," she says. "There was a real sense of belonging and a feeling of personal job worth at CEC. If I had my way, I'd take my old job back today."
i. What exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine would the attorney have used to file the lawsuit?
ii. Comment on the confidential information policy adopted by Centrex Electronics. Do you agree with the way it is used? Explain.
iii. Is dating a "romantic relationship"? Explain.