Handling Workplace Vigilantes

Recently, an Oregon Home Depot worker claimed that he was fired for helping a customer pursue a man she claimed kidnapped her child. Home Depot ended up changing its mind and allowed him to keep his position. However, this brings to mind a couple of Tennessee cases in which employees claimed they were unlawfully fired for acting as "Good Samaritans." These employees learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished.

In the case of Little v. Eastgate of Jackson, Jason Little was working as a store clerk when he saw a man assaulting a woman across the street. Little grabbed a baseball bat and confronted the assailant, causing the assailant to flee. He was a hero, right? That's not what his employer thought. His employer fired him because he abandoned the store to become involved in an altercation that was "none of our business."

Little sued for common-law retaliatory discharge. To pursue such a claim, an employee must show that he was fired for exercising a legal right "or for any other reason which violates a clear public policy." Little argued that Tennessee law reflects an important public policy of protecting citizens from bodily harm and preventing crime. The Tennessee Court of Appeals agreed that Little could pursue his claim. The court recognized the "Tennessee public policy of encouraging citizens to rescue a person reasonably believed to be in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, and to protect a citizen who undertakes such heroic action from negative repercussions."

A few years later, a Tennessee federal district court considered the application of this reasoning in Miller v. Home Depot. In that case, Murfreesboro Home Depot manager Robert Miller ran out of the store's front door after hearing a commotion. He saw a coworker telling a man with a crowbar and a wad of cash to give back the money. The man threw down the crowbar and ran. Miller chased after him and restrained him before the police arrived. He was a hero, right? That's not what Home Depot thought. Home Depot wasn't grateful that Miller had retrieved...