Reference no: EM131450786

Question: Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc. 100 Cal. Rptr. 2d 352 (Cal. 2000)

Plaintiff John Guz, a longtime employee of Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI), was terminated at age 49 when his work unit was eliminated as a way to reduce costs. At the time he was hired and at his termination, Bechtel had a Personnel Policy 1101 on the subject of termination of employment which explained that "Bechtel employees have no employment agreements guaranteeing continuous service and may resign at their option or be terminated at the option of Bechtel." Guz sued BNI and its parent, Bechtel Corporation, alleging age discrimination, breach of an implied contract to be terminated only for good cause, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

The trial court found in favor of Bechtel and dismissed the action. The Court of Appeals reversed and determined that the trial should instead be permitted to proceed. Bechtel appealed to the Supreme Court of California, which reverses the judgment of the Court of Appeals based on a finding that no implied contract exists and remands only for a determination of whether there are any enforceable express contract terms.

III. Implied Covenant Claim

Bechtel urges that the trial court properly dismissed Guz's separate claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing because, on the facts and arguments presented, this theory of recovery is either inapplicable or superfluous. We agree. The sole asserted basis for Guz's implied covenant claim is that Bechtel violated its established personnel policies when it terminated him without a prior opportunity to improve his "unsatisfactory" performance, used no force ranking or other objective criteria when selecting him for layoff, and omitted to consider him for other positions for which he was qualified.

Guz urges that even if his contract was for employment at-will, the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing precluded Bechtel from "unfairly" denying him the contract's benefits by failing to follow its own termination policies. Thus, Guz argues, in effect, that the implied covenant can impose substantive terms and conditions beyond those to which the contract parties actually agreed. However, as indicated above, such a theory directly contradicts our conclusions in Foley v. Interactive Data Corp. (1988). The covenant of good faith and fair dealing, implied by law in every contract, exists merely to prevent one contracting party from unfairly frustrating the other party's right to receive the benefits of the agreement actually made.

The covenant thus cannot "be endowed with an existence independent of its contractual underpinnings." It cannot impose substantive duties or limits on the contracting parties beyond those incorporated in the specific terms of their agreement. . . . The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms. Thus if the employer's termination decisions, however arbitrary, do not breach such a substantive contract provision, they are not precluded by the covenant.

This logic led us to emphasize in Foley that "breach of the implied covenant cannot logically be based on a claim that [the] discharge [of an at-will employee] was made without good cause." As we noted, "[b]ecause the implied covenant protects only the parties' right to receive the benefit of their agreement, and, in an at-will relationship there is no agreement to terminate only for good cause, the implied covenant standing alone cannot be read to impose such a duty." The same reasoning applies to any case where an employee argues that even if his employment was at-will, his arbitrary dismissal frustrated his contract benefits and thus violated the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Precisely because employment at-will allows the employer freedom to terminate the relationship as it chooses, the employer does not frustrate the employee's contractual rights merely by doing so. In such a case, "the employee cannot complain about a deprivation of the benefits of continued employment, for the agreement never provided for a continuation of its benefits in the first instance."

At odds with Foley are suggestions that independent recovery for breach of the implied covenant may be available if the employer terminated the employee in "bad faith" or "without probable cause," i.e., without determining "honestly and in good faith that good cause for discharge existed." Where the employment contract itself allows the employer to terminate at-will, its motive and lack of care in doing so are, in most cases at least, irrelevant. A number of Court of Appeal decisions since Foley have recognized that the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing imposes no independent limits on an employer's prerogative to dismiss employees . . . We affirm that this is the law. Of course, as we have indicated above, the employer's personnel policies and practices may become impliedin-fact terms of the contract between employer and employee.

If that has occurred, the employer's failure to follow such policies when terminating an employee is a breach of the contract itself. A breach of the contract may also constitute a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. But insofar as the employer's acts are directly actionable as a breach of an implied-in-fact contract term, a claim that merely realleges that breach as a violation of the covenant is superfluous. This is because, as we explained at length in Foley, the remedy for breach of an employment agreement, including the covenant of good faith and fair dealing implied by law therein, is solely contractual. In the employment context, an implied covenant theory affords no separate measure of recovery, such as tort damages. Allegations that the breach was wrongful, in bad faith, arbitrary, and unfair are unavailing; there is no tort of "bad faith breach" of an employment contract.

We adhere to these principles here. To the extent Guz's implied covenant cause of action seeks to impose limits on Bechtel's termination rights beyond those to which the parties actually agreed, the claim is invalid. To the extent the implied covenant claim seeks simply to invoke terms to which the parties did agree, it is superfluous. Guz's remedy, if any, for Bechtel's alleged violation of its personnel policies depends on proof that they were contract terms to which the parties actually agreed. The trial court thus properly dismissed the implied covenant cause of action. We do not suggest the covenant of good faith and fair dealing has no function whatever in the interpretation and enforcement of employment contracts. As indicated above, the covenant prevents a party from acting in bad faith to frustrate the contract's actual benefits. Thus, for example, the covenant might be violated if termination of an at-will employee was a mere pretext to cheat the worker out of another contract benefit to which the employee was clearly entitled, such as compensation already earned. We confront no such claim here.

1. Based on Guz, can the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing apply to any conditions not actually stated in a contract? In other words, can the covenant apply to anything beyond that which is actually stated in an employment contract? If not, is there no implied covenant as long as someone is at-will without a contract?

2. Explain the distinction between the court's discussion of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing and the possibility of an implied contract term.