Discharge for Proper Cause? Case Incident

DISCHARGE FOR PROPER CAUSE?  CASE INCIDENT

An agricultural company was established immediately after the Second World War.  The Company started In a small way selling agricultural equipment on cash basis.  As it grew, it extended its operations to include motor trucks, farm tractors, parts and  service.  Sales was good then and it was able to finance many of their installment sales themselves.  Because of the increase in installment sales, it became necessary to augment its staff of lawyers to handle legal cases inherent to installment selling.  Atty. Artemio de Jesus, a lawyer was hired as Legal Assistant by the Company and was directly responsible to the Corporate Secretary.  He was given the task of handling legal cases covering installment sales.

For several years, Atty. de Jesus did a very good job.  But the job was good only while legal cases arising from installment sales lasted.  The Company, after losing heavily on repossessions, decided that it would no longer allow in-house financing but would assign or sell all installment sales to a financing company.  Due to the change in the financing policy of the company, the position of Atty. Artemio de Jesus with the Company became irrelevant and is services were no longer needed.

Because legal matters were the only cases that Atty. de Jesus handled for the Company, he was not prepared to occupy other positions or do other jobs for the Company in case of vacancies.  Because of this, the management did not know what to do with him.

The first choice of action by the Company was to terminate the services of Atty. de Jesus.  However, the Company knew that to do so would result in a legal battle between them and him.  Furthermore, they could not readily terminate the services of Atty. de Jesus without prior approval from the Department of Labor & Employment.  The alternative action actually taken by the Company was to transfer or reassign Atty. de Jesus to the only vacant position in the Company at that time.  This was a sure way out of getting rid of him.  He was offered theposition of a commission salesman on the condition that if no significant production was achieved by Atty. De Jesus in six months, he would be forced to resign due to non-production.