Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Louisiana and "Compelled Self Publication"

One other quick thought before I head off.. On the slight chance that any Louisiana lawyer see this and has dealt with this issue give a holler in the comment section. I am doing some contract work and the lawyer wants to raise this issue. Problem is the "new doctrine" has not been recognized in Louisiana yet. In fact the there seems to be a split in the states as to this doctrine.

The scenario is person x gets fired for a reason that is false is basically false and in fact is defamation. He then feels "compelled" to tell the truth on his future job applications and thus loses potential jobs. He feels he must be truthful and do self publication. Thus we want Louisiana to hold this doctrine so we can sue the evil company.

Now it would seem that the Civil Law system might give us good public policy reasons for accepting this. For instance surely we want people to tell the truth!!! Who can be against that!!!!

However I think we are going to have other public policy concerns that are in opposition. For instance in Louisiana we are an employment at will state. If this was enacted then every employee that gets fired for reason x has a huge weapon to really defeat this concept. I will note that many Civil Code articles that deal with good faith in contracts and dealings have not come into play much in messing with this concept.

Also there is the "speech issue" and the privilege issue too. Oh well my grandfathers funeral is making me put this aside for a while. We have a Motion for Summary Judgement coming up(Luke next Wednesday) so I am taking my work with me.

I did a pretty big search of Louisiana case law and the courts have not appeared to address this directly. If you have any ideas let me know!!!

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