Employment At-Will: Sacred Writ or Big Lie?

John Judge, Judge, Kostura, & Putman, P.C.

Abstract

Texas was the fourth state to adopt the at-will rule of employment termination, an inferential rebuttal defense to an employee’s action for breach of a contract of employment of indefinite duration. The 1888 decision in East Line & R. R. R. Co. v. Scott, 10 S.W. 99 (Tex., 1888), looks to Horace Woods’ 1877 treatise MASTER & SERVANT, and has been slavishly followed in Texas despite dubious intellectual provenance and a complete lack of relevance to actual reality in the contemporary employment market.