{ "id": 3192772, "name": "PATRICIA HINTHORN, Appellee, v. ROLAND'S OF BLOOMINGTON, INC., Appellant", "name_abbreviation": "Hinthorn v. Roland's of Bloomington, Inc.", "decision_date": "1988-02-11", "docket_number": "No. 64917", "first_page": "526", "last_page": "535", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "119 Ill. 2d 526" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "Ill.", "id": 8772, "name": "Illinois Supreme Court" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 29, "name_long": "Illinois", "name": "Ill." }, "cites_to": [ { "cite": "409 Ill. 365", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill.", "case_ids": [ 5310374 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill/409/0365-01" ] }, { "cite": "10 Ill. 2d 167", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 2725267 ], "year": 1951, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/10/0167-01" ] }, { "cite": "85 Ill. 2d 124", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 5469094 ], "weight": 4, "pin_cites": [ { "page": "134" }, { "page": "133" }, { "page": "130" }, { "page": "130" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/85/0124-01" ] }, { "cite": "59 Md. App. 642", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Md. App.", "case_ids": [ 2255653 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/md-app/59/0642-01" ] }, { "cite": "138 Ill. App. 3d 219", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. App. 3d", "case_ids": [ 8498827 ], "weight": 2, "pin_cites": [ { "page": "225" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-app-3d/138/0219-01" ] }, { "cite": "109 Ill. 2d 1", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 3125939 ], "pin_cites": [ { "page": "7" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/109/0001-01" ] }, { "cite": "112 Ill. 2d 64", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 5539282 ], "year": 1985, "pin_cites": [ { "page": "67" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/112/0064-01" ] }, { "cite": "106 Ill. 2d 520", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 3138751 ], "weight": 4, "pin_cites": [ { "page": "529" }, { "page": "525" }, { "page": "527" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/106/0520-01" ] }, { "cite": "74 Ill. 2d 172", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 2994390 ], "weight": 5, "pin_cites": [ { "page": "181" }, { "page": "180-81" }, { "page": "181" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/74/0172-01" ] }, { "cite": "151 Ill. App. 3d 1006", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. App. 3d", "case_ids": [ 3539999 ], "weight": 2, "pin_cites": [ { "page": "1009" }, { "page": "1008" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-app-3d/151/1006-01" ] } ], "analysis": { "cardinality": 670, "char_count": 14213, "ocr_confidence": 0.788, "pagerank": { "raw": 9.093449064802769e-07, "percentile": 0.9792659726493707 }, "sha256": "04ef0bc20131991f33121e9f696a2be8b43b676caaf9ad5418bde687eaf94863", "simhash": "1:152bdde0687014d9", "word_count": 2251 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T22:46:47.539423+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [], "parties": [ "PATRICIA HINTHORN, Appellee, v. ROLAND\u2019S OF BLOOMINGTON, INC., Appellant." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "JUSTICE SIMON\ndelivered the opinion of the court:\nOn September 6, 1985, plaintiff, Patricia Hinthorn, filed a complaint in the circuit court of McLean County against her previous employer, Roland\u2019s of Bloomington, Inc. (Roland\u2019s), alleging that she had been discharged in retaliation for asserting her rights to medical attention for a work-related injury. The complaint was dismissed with prejudice by the trial court for failure to state a cause of action for retaliatory discharge. The appellate court reversed and remanded, finding the complaint \u201cbarely sufficient to state a cause of action.\u201d (151 Ill. App. 3d 1006, 1009.) We allowed Roland\u2019s appeal pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 315(a). 107 Ill. 2d R. 315(a).\nAccording to the complaint, plaintiff was working as a clerk in the shipping department of Roland\u2019s on Friday, February 8, 1985, when she suffered a back injury on the job. She had suffered two previous injuries at work during the preceding 12 months, had sought medical attention for those injuries, and had made claims for her medical bills under the Illinois Workers\u2019 Compensation Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 48, par. 138.1 et seq.). On Monday, February 11, 1985, plaintiff reported her back injury to her supervisor and requested medical attention. The supervisor instructed plaintiff to meet with the company\u2019s vice-president.\nPlaintiff met with the vice-president the same day and informed him that she was in pain, required medical attention, and wished to seek such medical attention. The vice-president responded by telling plaintiff that she should seek other employment. He told plaintiff that she had been \u201cgetting hurt too much \u2014 costing the company too much money,\u201d while directing her to sign a \u201cVoluntary Resignation\u201d form. The vice-president said that by signing the form, plaintiff would be able to leave her employment with Roland\u2019s under her own free will. Although plaintiff did not fully understand the meaning of the \u201cVoluntary Resignation\u201d form, she understood that she would lose her job if she did not sign it. Plaintiff then signed the form.\nThis court first recognized a cause of action for retaliatory discharge in Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc. (1978), 74 Ill. 2d 172, in which an employer fired an employee after she filed a workers\u2019 compensation claim for a work-related injury. To ensure that the sound public policy underlying the Workers\u2019 Compensation Act could not be frustrated by the actions of an employer, the court held that the tort of retaliatory discharge should exist. (Kelsay, 74 Ill. 2d at 181.) A plaintiff states a valid claim for retaliatory discharge only if she alleges that she was (1) discharged; (2) in retaliation for her activities; and (3) that the discharge violates a clear mandate of public policy. (Barr v. Kelso-Burnett Co. (1985), 106 Ill. 2d 520, 529.) Mindful that on a motion to dismiss, all the allegations of the complaint, as well as all reasonable inferences therefrom, must be regarded as true (Katz v. Belmont National Bank (1986), 112 Ill. 2d 64, 67; Mein v. Masonite Corp. (1985), 109 Ill. 2d 1, 7), we will examine each of these elements in turn.\nAppellant contends that because plaintiff signed a \u201cVoluntary Resignation\u201d form, plaintiff was not \u201cdischarged\u201d within the meaning of the retaliatory discharge concept and therefore can state no claim for retaliatory discharge. The appellate court wrestled with this issue, noting that the trial court relied heavily on Scheller v. Health Care Service Corp. (1985), 138 Ill. App. 3d 219, in dismissing the complaint. In Scheller, the plaintiff alleged that she had been severely harassed by her employer, and that this harassment caused her to resign. Plaintiff claimed that resignation under such circumstances amounted to a constructive discharge, making her employer liable to a claim for retaliatory discharge. (See Beye v. Bureau of National Affairs (1984), 59 Md. App. 642, 477 A.2d 1197 (recognizing \u201cconstructive discharge\u201d as actionable element of a retaliatory discharge claim).) Relying on the language in Barr v. Kelso-Burnett (1985), 106 Ill. 2d 520, stating that the supreme court \u201c \u2018does not \u201cstrongly support\u201d the expansion of the [retaliatory discharge] tort,\u2019 \u201d the appellate court refused to extend the tort to include situations in which the plaintiff has been only constructively, not actually, discharged. Scheller, 138 Ill. App. 3d at 225, quoting Barr, 106 Ill. 2d at 525.\nThe appellate court here distinguished the facts of this case from those in Scheller. In Scheller the plaintiff admitted resigning voluntarily in response to the employer\u2019s actions. In the present case plaintiff did not claim that she was driven by the employer\u2019s actions to voluntarily resign, but that she resigned involuntarily only because she was explicitly directed to do so by her employer. The court reasoned that \u201c[i]f an employer can obtain resignations from weaker willed and less sophisticated employees in order to retaliate against them for exercise of rights involving a public policy by threatening discharge, even by implication, the remedy promulgated by the retaliatory discharge doctrine can be significantly impaired.\u201d (151 Ill. App. 3d at 1008.) Therefore, the appellate court concluded that a cause of action for retaliatory discharge exists for an employee who has been \u201cforced to resign under the express or implied threat of discharge,\u201d and that plaintiff had sufficiently alleged that she was \u201cdischarged\u201d within the retaliatory discharge concept.\nWe agree that plaintiff has sufficiently alleged that she was discharged, but wish to make abundantly clear that we are not now endorsing the constructive discharge concept rejected by the appellate court in Scheller. We have no need to rule upon the viability of a constructive discharge theory at this time, because the plaintiff alleges that she was actually and not constructively discharged.\nPlaintiff alleges that when she met with defendant\u2019s vice-president and requested medical attention, he told her that she should seek other employment. Such a statement, especially where as here, the employer simultaneously chastised the employee for being injured too often and costing the company too much money, could certainly be understood as a discharge. There are no magic words required to discharge an employee: an employer cannot escape responsibility for an improper discharge simply because he never uttered the words \u201cyou\u2019re fired.\u201d So long as the employer\u2019s message that the employee has been involuntarily terminated is clearly and unequivocally communicated to the employee, there has been an actual discharge, regardless of the form such discharge takes.\nThat defendant directed plaintiff to sign a \u201cVoluntary Resignation\u201d form also does not alter the allegation that plaintiff was involuntarily discharged. That Roland\u2019s required the official termination to be by the stroke of the employee\u2019s own pen does not shield it from liability for the act of discharge. At most, Roland\u2019s was offering plaintiff a way to save face, to keep her resume clear of a discharge. But from the alleged circumstances it is clear plaintiff was not being given an actual opportunity to continue her employment at Roland\u2019s: had she refused to sign the form, she would have been fired in any event.\nDefendant\u2019s counsel conceded in oral argument that the reason defendant had plaintiff sign the resignation form was to \u201cprotect itself,\u201d presumably from claims of improper discharge. It would be a bitter irony indeed if employers were allowed to protect themselves, to circumvent liability for retaliatory discharge by using their employees as the unwitting tools to escape responsibility for their tortious acts. This is especially true in this case, where plaintiff has alleged that she did not even understand the meaning of the voluntary resignation form, but signed it only because she was directed to do so by her employer.\nThe second element a plaintiff must allege in order to state a valid cause of action for retaliatory discharge is that the discharge was in retaliation for the employee\u2019s activities. This element basically requires that plaintiff allege the causal relationship between the employee\u2019s activities and the discharge. As the appellate court noted, the plaintiff\u2019s complaint labelled the discharge by defendant as retaliatory, but did not explicitly delineate the conduct on the part of the plaintiff for which plaintiff was discharged. However, the complaint spells out the course of events which led to her discharge, emphasizing that her disclosure of her work-related injuries and her request for medical attention, first to her supervisor and then to the vice-president, were the activities which triggered her discharge. Therefore, a fair reading of the complaint informs defendant that the activity which plaintiff claims she was discharged in retaliation for was requesting medical attention. Although plaintiff\u2019s complaint \u201cis less specific than it could be,\u201d it informed the defendant of the crux of the claim and thus is sufficient. Palmateer v. International Harvester Co. (1981), 85 Ill. 2d 124, 134; see also Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 110, par. 2\u2014612(b) (\u201cNo pleading is bad in substance which contains such information as reasonably informs the opposite party of the nature of the claim or defense which he or she is called upon to meet\u201d).\nThe final element a plaintiff must allege to state a claim for retaliatory discharge is that the discharge violates a clear mandate of public policy, because \u201c[t]he foundation of the tort *** lies in the protection of public policy.\u201d (Palmateer, 85 Ill. 2d at 133.) This court has defined a clearly mandated public policy as \u201cwhat is right and just and what affects the citizens of the State collectively.\u201d (85 Ill. 2d at 130.) Such a policy must \u201cstrike at the heart of a citizen\u2019s social rights, duties, and responsibilities.\u201d (85 Ill. 2d at 130.) Public policy is to be found in the State\u2019s Constitution, statutes and judicial decisions and, where the public policy arises from a statute or constitutional provision, it is identified by \u201cexamining the history, purpose, language and effect of the provision.\u201d Barr, 106 Ill. 2d at 527.\nDefendant contends that no such policy has been violated by the discharge in this case because the policy underlying workers\u2019 compensation \u2014 the statutory enactment under which plaintiff claims a clear mandate of policy has been violated \u2014 protects only a worker\u2019s right to compensation for work-related injuries, not to medical attention itself. Such a construction of the policy underlying the Workers\u2019 Compensation Act is too narrow to be acceptable.\nIn Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc. (1979), 74 Ill. 2d 172, this court examined the public policy underlying the Workers\u2019 Compensation Act in the context of a retaliatory discharge action. The Act was intended to create a \u201cnew system of rights, remedies and procedure *** for accidental injuries or death of employees arising out of and in the course of the employment. *** [T]he fundamental purpose of the Act *** was to afford protection to employees by providing them with prompt and equitable compensation for their injuries.\u201d (Kelsay, 74 Ill. 2d at 180-81.) The policy underlying the Act is to provide \u201cefficient remedies for and protection of employees and, as such, promotes the general welfare of this State.\u201d (74 Ill. 2d at 181.) Thus, the overriding purpose of the Act is to protect injured employees by ensuring the availability of medical treatment, by shifting the financial burden of such treatment to the employer. See, e.g., O\u2019Brien v. Rautenbush (1956), 10 Ill. 2d 167; Petrazelli v. Propper (1951), 409 Ill. 365.\nThe defendant obviously confuses the procedural means by which remedies are provided to employees under workers\u2019 compensation with the fundamental policy upon which the Act rests. Payment of compensation to employees for their work-related medical bills is only the means by which the State ensures that employees will receive medical attention for their on-the-job injuries. The Act clearly states that it is the employer\u2019s responsibility to both \u201cprovide and pay for\u201d all necessary medical attention. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 48, par. 138.8.) Requesting and seeking medical attention, as the plaintiff in this case did, is only the crucial first step in exercising rights under the Workers\u2019 Compensation Act. Given that plaintiff had filed workers\u2019 compensation claims for both of her previous work injuries, it is reasonable to assume she would have done likewise in this situation. It would be anomalous to allow a retaliatory discharge action to employees who are fired after filing a workers\u2019 compensation claim for work-related injuries, but not those who are injured and fired before they ever get the chance to file such claims. Plaintiff should not be penalized because her employer discharged her in retaliation for orally requesting medical attention, instead of filing a formal compensation claim \u2014 the effect is the same: being fired in retaliation for asserting legal rights to medical care for work-related injuries.\nFinally, simply because plaintiff has alleged the three elements of a retaliatory discharge cause of action sufficiently to survive a motion to dismiss in no way predetermines the ultimate disposition of her claim. Upon further development of the facts, the fact finder may find that plaintiff did in fact voluntarily resign, or that the discharge was for some legitimate reason other than the request for medical attention. These are questions of fact that cannot be decided on a motion to dismiss. Accepting, as we must at this stage of the proceedings, all facts alleged by the plaintiff as true, and resolving all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff, we conclude that plaintiff has sufficiently alleged the elements of a retaliatory discharge cause of action.\nJudgment affirmed.", "type": "majority", "author": "JUSTICE SIMON" } ], "attorneys": [ "Donald W. Wilcox, Jr., of Thomson & Weintraub, of Bloomington, for appellant.", "Strodel, Kingery & Durree, Assoc., of Peoria (James R. Carter, of counsel), for appellee." ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "(No. 64917.\nPATRICIA HINTHORN, Appellee, v. ROLAND\u2019S OF BLOOMINGTON, INC., Appellant.\nOpinion filed February 11, 1988.\nDonald W. Wilcox, Jr., of Thomson & Weintraub, of Bloomington, for appellant.\nStrodel, Kingery & Durree, Assoc., of Peoria (James R. Carter, of counsel), for appellee." }, "file_name": "0526-01", "first_page_order": 538, "last_page_order": 547 }