Employee properly terminated for making threats

A county hospital nurse filed a workers compensation stress claim and demanded to be removed from working under the supervision of her manager. The employer refused to do so. The nurse then told a co-worker and the worker's compensation claims examiner that if she ever worked for her supervisor again, she would kill her. When asked if she was speaking figuratively, the nurse said no, she meant it, and repeated the threat several times, saying "Next time she talks to me, unless it's to say thank you, I'm going to kill her."

Based on these threats, security was alerted, and the supervisor took several days off, changed her arrival and departure times, changed her parking spot, and was unable to concentrate on her work (by the way, the supervisor was hospitalized with a difficult pregnancy while all this was happening).

The nurse who made the threats was terminated, in part because of California Penal Code section 422 which provides in pertinent part that, "Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person, with the specific intent that the statement is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out, which, on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made, is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to convey to the person threatened, a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat, and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety, shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison. . . ."

The nurse then sued for wrongful termination, claiming her conduct did not violate this law. The California Court of Appeal held that even if her behavior did not violate the code section, the employer had the right, indeed the duty, to terminate her employment in order to provide a safe work environment for others.

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