Labor Relations and Employment Law: 1997 Developments in Connecticut

• Jurisdiction: Connecticut,United States
• Publication year: 2021
• Citation: Vol. 72 Pg. 42
• Pages: 42

Connecticut Bar JournalVolume 72.

72 CBJ 42. LABOR RELATIONS AND EMPLOYMENT LAW: 1997 DEVELOPMENTS IN CONNECTICUT

---

42

LABOR RELATIONS AND EMPLOYMENT LAW: 1997 DEVELOPMENTS IN CONNECTICUT

BY JOSHUA A. HAWKS-LADDS(fn*)

This article reviews significant 1997 employment-related decisions of the Connecticut Supreme, Appellate, and Superior Courts and the State of Connecticut Board of Labor Relations, as well as important 1997 legislation. While the article is not exhaustive, it does include the majority of employment decisions from the Connecticut appellate courts, including many workers' compensation cases. By numbers alone, workers' compensation issues dominated the appellate courts in this area.

Four Supreme Court decisions stand out. The court again eroded the "at-will" employment doctrine in two of these cases: Parsons v. United Technologies Corporation, Sikorsky Aircraft Division(fn1) and Faulkner v. United Technologies Corporation, Sikorsky Aircraft Division.(fn2) In Butler v. Hartford Technical Institute, Inc.,(fn3).the court determined that individuals may be liable for attorneys' fees and damages under Connecticut's wage laws. Finally, in Sekor v. Board o Education of the Town of Ridgefield,(fn4) the court held that a tenured teacher may be terminated for incompetence even when she was competent to teach one out of three of her certified subject matters.

Appellate Court highlights include a decision ostensibly expanding the standard of vicarious liability for employers by determining that two Catholic institutions can be held liable for an alleged sexual assault by their priest.(fn5) The court also decided that a tenured teacher arrested for cocaine posession can be terminated for "moral misconduct" or "other due and sufficient cause," even when he claimed that his disability (substance abuse) was the cause of the "moral misconduct."(fn6)

1. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

One of the more consequential issues facings employment law practitioners recently is an individual supervisor's personal liability under Connecticut's various employment related laws. In 1997, the Supreme Court conclusively decided that an individual could be liable for the payment of overtime wages, double damages and Attorney fees under Connecticut General Statutes Section 31-72, one of Connecticut's wage and hour laws - even when the employer is a corporation, not an individual. In James P Butler, Commissioner of Labor ex rel. Marjorie Skidmore v. Hartford Technical Institute, Inc.,(fn7) the court held that personal liability exists under this statute if the individual is the ultimate authority who sets the employee's hours of employment, is responsible for the payment of wages and is the specific cause of the wage violation.(fn8) This holding may well mean that if a corporate employer fails to pay wages, individual supervisors can be criminally liable under Connecticut General Statutes Section 31-71g, and now liable for civil penalties under Connecticut General Statutes Section 31-72, as well.

The court in Butler based its decision on its interpretation of the definition of "employer" in Connecticut General Statutes Section 31-7la(l). That section defines "employer" as [a]ny individual, partnership, association, joint stock company, trust, corporation, the administrator or executor of the estate of a deceased person, the conservator of the estate of an incompetent, or the receiver, trustee, successor or assignee of any of the same, employing any person, including the state and any political subdivision thereof.

The individual defendant asserted that this definition merely established the various types of "persons" that could be employers under the act and did not define who the particular employer was in any given case. Thus, if the employer in a given case happened to be an individual, that individual would be liable for any failure to pay wages; likewise if the employer were a corporation, then the corporation would be solely liable for any unpaid wages.(fn9) Based on this argument, the individual defendant maintained that Connecticut General Statutes Section 31-72 did not render him personally liable as an employer when he was not, in fact, the plaintiff's employer - the corporation was. He further argued that the law did not impose vicarious liability on officers or agents of the corporate employer.(fn10)

Conceding that these arguments had a "superficial textual appeal" and noting that "the legislation could have been drafted more clearly so as to make explicit what was only implied,"(fn11) the court came to a different conclusion. According to the court, even though the plain language of Section 31-72 is vague, its intent nevertheless was clear; when Section 31-72 is viewed in relation to Section 31-71g, it would be bizarre for a court to be able to convict an individual of a felony under Section 31-71g and imprison him for up to five years for violating the wage laws, "yet that same individual could not be held liable pursuant to Section 31-72 for the amount of unpaid wages merely because of the existence of a corporate employer."(fn12) The court, therefore, held that "on the basis of the language of Section 31-72, the policy it was designed to implement, and its structural relationship to Section 31-71g," an individual can be personally liable as an employer pursuant to Section 31-72 - notwithstanding the fact that a corporation is also an employer of the claimant - so long as the individual is the ultimate responsible authority to set the hours of employment and to pay wages and is the specific cause of the wage violation.(fn13)

The Supreme Court rendered two decisions in 1997 which extended the protection Connecticut law affords to at will employees. In the first, Faulkner v. United Technologies Corporation, Sikorsky Aircraft Division,(fn14) the plaintiff was a quality assurance inspector for Sikorsky who inspected subcontract or supplied parts that were used in constructing United States Army Blackhawk helicopters produced pursuant to a federal procurement contract.(fn15) The plaintiff alleged that his supervisors disapproved of his rejection of defective parts and warned him that he might be disciplined in the future for this conduct.(fn16) Subsequently, Sikorsky terminated the plaintiff for supposed misconduct.(fn17) The plaintiff alleged that he was really discharged for his refusal to accept the defective helicopter parts and to participate in their installation.(fn18) He sued for wrongful discharge under Sheets v. Teddy's Frosted Foods, Inc.,(fn19) claiming that his termination violated the public policy against government contract fraud as expressed in a federal statute, the Major Frauds Act.(fn20)

The trial court struck plaintiff's claim, concluding that where the public policy violation was grounded in federal law, the plaintiff must connect the federal law to Connecticut's own public policies and allege that the violation of federal public policy also interfered with an important state interest.(fn21) The Supreme Court reversed, holding that a federal statute - in this case, the Major Frauds Act - may be used to establish a discharge in violation of public policy.(fn22) According to the court, there is no difference between a situation in which an employee is forced to engage in conduct that may expose him to federal criminal sanctions, to a situation in which an employee is forced to engage in conduct that may expose him to state criminal sanctions. The effect on the employee of being forced to choose between violating the law or facing discharge by his employer is the same regardless of which sovereign criminalizes the conduct.(fn23) Thus, not only may a Sheets claim be based on a federal law, there is no need to demonstrate any connection between this federal policy and the state's policies or interests.

In the second case, Parsons v. United Technologies Corporation, Sikorsky Aircraft Division,(fn24) the court again eroded Connecticut's at-will employment doctrine. In Parsons, the plaintiff was a Sikorsky aircraft worker who was fired for refusing to travel to, and work at, the "Headquarters, Bahrain Defense Force" after the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory to Bahrain due to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and "Operation Desert Shield."(fn25) The plaintiff sued for wrongful discharge, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiff's SheetS26 claim was that his discharge violated the public policy reflected in Connecticut General Statutes Sections 3149 and 31-370, which require Connecticut employers to provide their employees with a reasonably safe workplace.(fn27)

The trial court struck plaintiff's claim on two grounds: first, that the plaintiff failed to allege that UTC "owned, controlled or maintained a workplace in Bahrain"; and second, even if there were such a workplace, "the statutes cited by the plaintiff do not express a public policy which would prohibit an employer from requiring an employee to travel to a foreign country where there may be some type of instability or military threat."(fn28)

The Supreme Court reversed,(fn29) concluding that the Connecticut statutes cited by the plaintiff expressed "a clear and defined public policy requiring an employer who conducts business in Connecticut to provide a reasonably safe workplace to its employees"(fn30) even if that work site is "located outside Connecticut where the employer has no control."(fn31)

The court. concluded that Connecticut law "simply and firmly prohibit(s) employers who conduct business in Connecticut from exposing their employees to known hazards while they are performing their duties."(fn32) Therefore, if the employer "directed the employee to work in a place or condition that poses an objectively substantial risk of death, disease or serious bodily injury to the employee," the employee may state a legally sufficient...