Automatic Sprinkler Corp. of America v. Anderson

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that because compensation plan stated that “ ‘award of any direct incentive compensation is entirely within the discretion of the corporation,”’ contract was unambiguous and employee had no absolute right to deferred incentive compensation
• holding that where an employment contract provided that an award of direct incentive compensation was “directly within the discretion of the corporation,” the employer was not required to exercise its discretion in good faith
• holding that, when a USCA11 Case: 23-12882 Document: 50-1 Date Filed: 10/02/2025 Page: 5 of 22 23-12882 Opinion of the Court 5 contract “leave[s] decisions absolutely to the uncontrolled discre- tion of one of the parties[,] . . . the issue of good faith is irrele- vant”
• distinguishing “[t]he absolute nature of the language” of the contract in that case from “the more ambiguous language” in another case
• affirming the judgment that there was no contractual right to an incentive compensation payment where the written employment contract stated that its payment was discretionary
• discretion was absolute where contract stated that the decision was “entirely within the discretion of the corporation” and that the corporation’s discretion was “absolute”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).