In Yardley v. Hospital
Housekeeping Systems, LLC, the Tennessee Supreme Court decided that job
applicants cannot sue a prospective employer for refusing to hire the applicant
solely because the applicant filed a worker’s compensation claim against a previous
employer.
What makes Yardley
exciting for employers is that the Court specifically states that in Tennessee,
“there is no statutory or common law cause of action for retaliatory failure to
hire.” So, employers can find some comfort in that statement.
Why is Yardley
unusual? The employee was a housekeeping aide for a hospital. She injured
herself in the course of her employment and received worker’s compensation
benefits.
While she was on “light duty,” the hospital entered into a
contract to outsource its housekeeping to a third party. The company agreed to
interview the current housekeeping employees; however, the company was not
obligated to hire those employees. The company did not hire the employee because
of her prior worker’s compensation claim because “bringing her on board would
seem to be a Workers’ Comp. claim waiting to happen.” Thus, there was no
question that the refusal to hire this person was directly the result of the
filing of her prior Worker’s Compensation Claim.
The Court acknowledged its prior decisions that employees
could not be fired for filing a Worker’s Compensation claim; however, the Court
stated that protection did not apply to “prospective” employees stating “employers
should have freedom to make their own business judgments without interference
with the courts.”
For employers, this decision is a major victory. After years
of decisions granting employees the right to sue their employers for a variety
of alleged wrongs, the Tennessee Supreme Court took a stand in favor of the “at
will” employer.
Yardley v. Hospital
Housekeeping Systems, LLC, No. M2014-01723-SC-R23-CV (Tenn. Aug. 21, 2015).