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Enforcing employee handbook promises
July 06, 2006
In the old days, say around 1970, one could safely say that employees were "at will."
Then courts began to interpret employee handbooks as creating contractually enforceable promises. It was good deal for some employees.
Of course, this was contract law. And it is one of the great truths of contract law that it takes two to tango.
The courts that were finding contracts in employee handbooks made it pretty clear that if the employer (always the drafter of the handbook) said that the handbook did not create a contract, then ... well, Duh ... there was no contract.
Professor J. H. (Rip) Verkerke at the University of Virginia has written an interesting article exploring all this history, a history that has resulted in what he calls a "contractual equilibrium in which the overwhelming majority of employers contract expressly for an at-will relationship."
'Woolley v. Hoffmann-LaRoche': Finding a Way to Enforce Employee Handbook Promises.
Rip teaches both contracts and employment law, and is Director of the Program for Employment and Labor Law Studies at the University of Virginia Law School.
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