Last month, the Highland County Court of Appeals affirmed the Rule 12(B)(6) dismissal of a complaint filed against a bank for pregnancy discrimination and wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. Storer v. Natl. Coop. Bank, 2024-Ohio-1676. The Court concluded that there is no public policy in Ohio prohibiting an employer from discharging an employee who shared internal, private emails with her boyfriend’s attorney concerning a legal dispute with her employer. While public policy may protect consulting with an attorney about the employee’s own legal problems, that policy does not extend to protect the employee from consulting with a third-party’s attorney about his problems. Further, the Complaint failed to allege sufficient facts to show that her termination was related in any way to her pregnancy. Simply making “speculative” and “conclusory” allegations that she was fired while pregnant cannot survive a motion to dismiss.
According to the Court’s opinion, the plaintiff had been a
loan processor for seven years, had already been pregnant twice and always had
good performance evaluations. In 2021,
her boyfriend had a dispute with the bank over procuring mortgage loan
insurance. She sent an email to the bank’s
insurance analyst and later to the CEO and, apparently, shared them with her
boyfriend’s attorney, who then produced them during litigation discovery. In the meantime, she told her supervisor that she
was pregnant with her third child. There
were no allegations that she or her supervisor told anyone else at the bank
that she was pregnant. Two months later, she was terminated for her “unethical”
sharing of the internal emails with her boyfriend’s attorney. There are no allegations that her supervisor
participated in the termination decision. She and her boyfriend then filed suit. The bank moved to dismiss the complaint and
its motion was granted.
As the trial court noted:
There is no case law to support a
finding that the clear public policy of this state is to allow an employee to
voluntarily provide information or assistance to the attorney of another person
involved in a dispute with their employer. That could lead to significant
adverse impact on businesses if employees were allowed to assist attorneys
asserting claims against their employer. The Court finds that this is not a
clear public policy of the State of Ohio and has no basis in the Ohio
Constitution. Therefore, the Court finds that Count One [wrongful termination]
of the Plaintiffs’ complaint fails to state a claim under Ohio law upon which
relief can be granted.
The Court of Appeals rejected the plaintiff’s argument that
the public policy should be extended to her because she was “associated” with
her boyfriend. It found that she failed
to allege such a theory in her complaint or to oppose the motion to dismiss at
the trial court. Further, the bank
pointed out that the public policy exception for consulting with an attorney only
clearly extends to disputes regarding employment rights and not to independent
business interests of the employee which also implicate the employer’s rights
or to lawsuits filed against the employer by the employee.
We find no legal authority to
support an expansive public policy exception that would prohibit an employer
from terminating an employee who assists a third party’s attorney on legal
matters affecting the employer’s business. . . . . The concern identified by the trial court
supports our decision not to extend Chapman: “That could lead to a significant
adverse impact on businesses if employees were allowed to assist attorneys
asserting claims against their employers.” And, analogous to the rationale in Taylor, forcing an employer to work with an employee who is assisting a third
party’s attorney in a dispute against the employer would “place the employer in
the unenviable position of having to continue in a relationship that has been
tainted” by the dubious nature of an untrustworthy employee. Further, [the
plaintiff] did not allege that she consulted an attorney to advise her of any
rights she had as an employee. . . .
The Court rejected the plaintiff’s arguments that she had sufficiently
alleged that she was terminated because she was pregnant. Her complaint alleged little more than that
she was fired two months after informing only her immediate supervisor that she
was pregnant. There were no allegations
that the supervisor participated in the termination decision or that she or
anyone else had informed the decisionmakers that she was pregnant.
The Court observed that “although each element of a cause of
action does not have to be alleged with exacting specificity, the complaint
must still allege “sufficient underlying facts that relate to and support the
alleged claim and may not simply state legal conclusions.” In this case, the plaintiff’s complaint
alleged each element of a pregnancy discrimination claim in conclusory fashion
without any underlying or supporting factual allegations. Importantly, she “alleges no set facts to
support her legal conclusion that the bank’s decision to terminate her “was
motived by the fact she was pregnant.” It implicitly refused to impute her
supervisor’s knowledge to the executive decisionmakers.
The Court also rejected her argument that the temporal proximity
of two months between her announcement to her supervisor and her eventual
termination by bank executives was sufficient to support a causal connection
between the termination and her pregnancy without other compelling evidence.
“[T]he pleading standard Rule 8
announces does not require ‘detailed factual allegations,’ but it demands more
than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation. A pleading
that offers ‘labels and conclusion’ or ‘a formulaic recitation of the elements
of a cause of action will not do.’ Nor does a complaint suffice if it tenders
‘naked assertions’ devoid of ‘further factual enhancement.’ ”
NOTICE: This summary is designed merely to inform and alert
you of recent legal developments. It does not constitute legal advice and does
not apply to any particular situation because different facts could lead to
different results. Information here can change or be amended without notice.
Readers should not act upon this information without legal advice. If you have
any questions about anything you have read, you should consult with or retain
an employment attorney.
