Supreme Court Of Puerto Rico Reaffirms That Violence In The Workplace Justifies First Offense Termination

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico recently reaffirmed its previous position that an act of aggression by an employee towards a coworker is sufficient to establish just cause for termination under Puerto Rico's Unjustified Dismissal statute, Act No. 80 of May 30, 1978 ("Act 80"), even when the aggression is a first-time offense.

The plaintiff in Torres Alvarez v. Centro de Patología Avanzada de Puerto Rico, 2015 T.S.P.R. 136, 193 D.P.R. ___ (2015), was hired by a pathology center in 2005 as a physician. In 2010, she became upset at the center's administrative assistant for what the plaintiff considered failure to follow her instructions. In a subsequent meeting with the assistant and the center's director, the plaintiff said the administrative assistant's actions had made the plaintiff so furious that she did not know what she was capable of doing to the administrative assistant. The administrative assistant, who was pregnant, began to cry and left the meeting. The plaintiff then went to the administrative assistant's office, grabbed her by the arm and tried to pull her out of the office. The director intervened to...