1. Legal information for nurses Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession home page.
Employee Handbooks: Court Sickle-Cell
Willing To See Creation Of Screening:
Employment Contract For Result Should
Full Disciplinary Processes. Have Been
Verified.
W hen she was hired the hospital gave
the nurse a copy of the hospital’s Courts are beginning to
elaborate employee handbook.
According to the Court of Appeals of
see employee handbooks
issued by employers as the
T he Supreme Court of Virginia had to
rule on a summary judgment motion
filed by the attorneys for a pediatric clinic.
New Mexico, there was no individual e m-
basis for implied employ- The court did not rule definitively that the
ployment contract or other document defin-
clinic was negligent.
ing the relationship between the nurse and ment contracts in situations The court only ruled that if the par-
her employer. where there is no collective ents’ allegations were true there were legal
The nurse was fired for allegedly call-
bargaining agreement with a grounds for a civil lawsuit. The truth or
ing in prescriptions to the pharmacy for
patients without physicians’ orders. union or written employ- falsity of the allegations would have to be
ment contract with a particu- decided by a civil jury.
The nurse sued for wrongful dis-
charge. She claimed she had rights under lar employee.
the employee handbook. That is, the em- Employees are succeeding The mother said she asked
ployer’s stated policies for full progressive with wrongful discharge law- a clinic employee for the re-
discipline were not just a statement of the
suits against their former sults of the sickle-cell test
employer’s policies, they were her rights as
an employee. employers when fired with- for her second child.
Progressive Discipline out getting all the discipli- The mother said she was
The nurse claimed she could not be nary processes set out in told she would have been
fired without a verbal warning, written the employer’s employee notified if the test was posi-
warning, suspension and probation before tive so it must have been
handbook.
termination. Whether or not her conduct
was wrong, she claimed, her firing was null The courts are taking lan- negative.
and void because the procedures in the guage out of employee The parents conceived a
employee handbook were not followed. handbooks and giving em- third child who was born
Employer’s Policies ployees substantial rights. with sickle cell beta O thalas-
versus semia.
The traditional common-
Employees’ Rights
law rule is not faring well They would not have con-
The court said the trend in the US is
away from the traditional common-law rule that employees can be dis- ceived again if they had
that employers can fire at will when there is charged at any time for any known their second child ac-
no union contract or individual employ- reason with no legal re- tually was positive.
ment contract. SUPREME COURT OF VIRGINIA, 2001.
course for wrongful dis-
The key is whether the employer, by
promulgating and following an employee
charge.
handbook, has created expectations among Employers customarily put The court said a physician, nurse or
employees that the employer will follow its disclaimers in their em- other healthcare provider is negligent to
own policies, and whether employees have ployee handbooks that the report the results of medical tests on the
continued to work for the employer based basis of assumptions without actually
handbooks are not employ-
upon such expectations. If so, there is checking. Given the parents’ genetic pro-
ment contracts, but those file, the child would not have been
more likely than not an implicit employment
contract in which the employer’s policies disclaimers often are not screened for sickle cell in the first place
have become the employee’s rights, for honored by the courts. without a significant mathematical chance
which they can sue. Mealand v. ENMMC, 33 COURT OF APPEALS OF NEW MEXICO, of being positive. Didato v. Strehler, 554 S.
P. 3d 285 (N.M. App., 2001). 2001. E. 2d 42 (Va., 2001).
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession January, 2002 Page 4
Legal information for nurses Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession home page.