Wiggins v. Housing Authority of Kansas City

How courts have described this case

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

• concluding neither the statute nor the resolution, both of which authorized a city’s housing authority to “employ” individuals “permanent and temporary,” gave the housing authority the power to enter into fixed-term employment contracts with its employees
• Housing Authority of Kansas City, Kansas is a municipal corporation and an agency of the City of Kansas City, Kansas
• because housing authority had no authority to enter into a fixed-term contract, any implied employment contract was void and unenforceable
• “[A]ny reasonable doubt as to the existence of a particular power must be resolved against its existence.”
• “The law has made it clear that persons contracting with a municipal corporation must inquire into the power of the municipal corporation and must at their peril know the authority of the municipal corporation.”
• “Kansas is an ‘employment-at-will’ state in which the general rule is that, absent an express or implied contract between employer and employee governing the tenure of employment, either party may terminate the employment relationship at any time with or without cause.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).