Smith-Pfeffer v. Superintendent of the Walter E. Fernald State School

How courts have described this case

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

• reasoning that expanding the public policy exception to cover all discharges without just cause of employees performing appropriate, socially desirable duties would render the at-will rule meaningless
• rejecting plaintiff’s public policy wrongful termination claim because “[a]n employee, even one in a socially important occupation, who simply disagrees with her employer’s policy decisions, may not seek redress in the courts”
• “the issue whether there was a public policy violation is a question of law for the judge”
• discharge due to criticisms of state school of mental retardation did not fall within exception
• where employee expressed disagreement with superior’s management of school, even if to do so was appropriate, socially desirable conduct, termination was not wrongful because school management was an internal matter
• discharge violates public policy when an at-will employee is terminated for doing that which law requires or for refusing to do that which the law forbids

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).