The Language of a Statute Can Make All The Difference...Especially With a Wrongful Termination & Guns in the Workplace Case

Holly v. UPS Supply Chain Solutions, Inc. - Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals

Facts:  Bruce Holly ("Holly") was hired by UPS to work at a facility in Kentucky.  One day in April of 2013, Holly had car trouble on the way into work.  Once he arrived, Holly asked his manager, Ron Nolan ("Nolan"), for permission to take his car to a repair shop.  Nolan agreed and sent a member of management with Holly to drive him back from the shop.  As Holly was leaving work, he remembered that he had a handgun stored in the center console of his car.  (Holly had a concealed carry license and always carried a handgun in his car).  Holly did not want to leave the handgun in his car while he was in the shop so he asked another employee, Kenneth Moore ("Moore"), if he could store the gun in Moore's car.  Moore agreed and in the UPS parking lot, Holly removed the gun from his car and placed it in Moore's.  

However, when Holly was at the repair shop, Moore began to worry about having possession of the gun.  As a result, Moore reported Holly's request to a supervisor who referred the matter to Nolan.  Nolan reminded Holly upon his return to work that UPS had a policy which prohibited possession and/or use of weapons by any employee on company property.  Holly was not disciplined and at the end of the day got the gun from Moore's car.

UPS security and management later became aware of the incident through an unrelated investigation.  UPS suspsended Holly initially and upon conclusion of an internal investigation, terminated Holly for two reasons:  Holly's poor performance review and the fact that Holly asked Moore for a personal favor on company time.  Holly subsequently filed a wrongful termination claim against UPS and Jeremy Fletcher ("Fletcher"), Human Resources Supervisor, on the grounds that he had been illegally fired because of his lawful possession of a firearm on company property.  The District Court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the grounds that Holly could not establish a claim for wrongful termination under Kentucky law.  Holly subsequently appealed the ruling.

Holding:  Although Kentucky is an at will employment state and an employee can be discharged at any time for good cause, no cause, or cause that some might find morally indefensible, wrongful termination is not permissible.  A cause of action exists for wrongful termination when the discharge was "contrary to a fundamental and well defined public policy as evidenced...by a constitutional or statutory provision."

In this case, Holly based his wrongful termination claim on the allegation that the defendants violated two Kentucky statutes and a general public policy exception.  The first statute, Kentucky Revised Statutes Section 527.020 prohibits a private employer from prohibiting a person who has a license to carry a concealed weapon from keeping that weapon in his vehicle.  However, Kentucky Revised Statutes Section 237.110(17) provides that restriction applies only to weapons being kept in vehicles owned by an employee.  In this case, although the weapon was in Holly's car initially, he moved it to Moore's car, a vehicle Holly did not own.  Therefore, the plain language of Section 527.020 did not provide any "protection" for Holly's actions nor give him a valid cause of action.

As for the second statute, Kentucky Revised Statutes Section 237.106, Holly argued he was unlawfully terminated for exercising his rights under this statute.  This particular section lists four situations in which a firearm may be removed from a vehicle:  1) self defense; 2) defense of another; 3) defense of property; or 4) as authorized by the owner, lessee, or occupant of the property.  In this instance, Holly argued that "defense of property" should not be limited to handling a firearm to fight off others who may be trying to steal or damage property.  Instead, Holly argued a public policy exception should be read into the statute to "promote responsible gun possession/control."  However, the Court of Appeals noted that federal courts should be wary of adopting "substantive innovation" in state laws and therefore the Court was not inclined to read anything additional into the Kentucky statute.

Judgment:  The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's granting of summary judgment in favor of defendants and held that because Holly could not state a valid wrongful termination claim based upon Kentucky statute, his termination did not fall within the public policy exception of Kentucky's at will employment statute.  Thus, Holly was unable to proceed on his claim against the defendants. 

The Takeaway:  I will note that this case was very fact specific in terms of the language of a state statute and how it applied in this case.  As a result, the result reached by the Court of Appeals here would not necessarily be the same for every state.  It is a good idea to consult a specific state's statutes and laws first before attempting to apply a particular ruling from one circuit elsewhere.

With that being said, notice how the Court parsed the language of the statute to hold that because Holly moved the handgun to a car that was not his, he was not protected by the statute.  As well, given that the Court chose not to adopt a new interpretation of another part of the Kentucky statute, Holly simply had nothing else to fall back on here.  Had the language of the statute been more favorable to Holly (or had the Court of Appeals been willing to read a new interpretation into the plain language of the statute), this case might have been decided differently.  While it is quite possible that Holly's concealed carry license (and freely moving the weapon between cars) is what ultimately did him in at UPS, unfortunately, the statutes he attempted to rely upon to establish his claim were too narrowly drawn (and interpreted).

Majority Opinion Judge:  Judge Batchelder

Date:  March 2, 2017

Opinion:  hr.cch.com/ELD/HollyUPS030217.pdf