The Utah Court of Appeals clarified the analysis for determining whether an injured worker can prove a wrongful termination claim, and it revived a construction laborer’s lawsuit asserting he had been fired because of his pursuit of benefits.

Case: Medina v. Jeff Dumas Concrete Construction LLC, No. 20190654-CA, 12/17/2020, published.

Facts and procedural history: In 2015, Jose Medina began working for Jeff Dumas and Jeff Dumas Concrete Construction LLC as a laborer. He was an at-will employee.

JDCC terminated him in July 2018, and he filed a wrongful termination suit. According to Medina’s complaint, he regularly communicated with his supervisor about his work schedule by text message.

While he was at work in August 2017, a large concrete form fell on Medina, knocking him to the ground. Medina reported the accident to his supervisor but continued working despite experiencing pain in his back and shoulder.

Medina then felt his back “go out” while lifting a heavy bucket at work in October 2017. When he reported this to his supervisor, he was allegedly told to leave the job site immediately.

Medina filed a workers’ compensation claim with JDCC’s insurer, the Workers’ Compensation Fund of Utah, after the October 2017 incident.

The carrier began paying for Medina’s treatment, and he attended physical therapy during work hours. It then ceased its payments, and Medina’s supervisor informed him he would have to start attending therapy on his own time.

Medina missed work once in November 2017 and nine times between March and July 2018.

Each time he missed work, Medina informed his supervisor of his absence by text message.

Medina asked Dumas personally for vacation time from July 2 until July 6, 2018. Dumas approved the request and Medina texted his supervisor on July 1, 2018, saying he would not be working the following week.

The supervisor responded that it seemed like Medina no longer wanted to work, and Medina responded that he did, but he was not going to be gone on vacation.

The supervisor later complained to Dumas that Medina was missing work once or twice a week, almost every week, and that he had an entire week in July. The supervisor claimed Medina never asked for permission to take time off and never provided advance notice.

Medina told his supervisor he was going to miss work on July 16, 2018, to attend a deposition in connection with his workers’ compensation claim. While he was at his deposition, his supervisor texted him and said he was fired.

After Medina filed his wrongful termination suit, JDCC denied having notice that Medina was giving a deposition. The company asserted that Medina was fired for not showing up to work for numerous days without any notice or explanation, and taking an unauthorized vacation.

JDCC further denied that Medina had ever suffered any injuries while a JDCC employee. The company moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, and a trial judge granted the motion.

Analysis: The Utah Court of Appeals said that under state law, a worker bringing a wrongful termination claim bears the burden of proving that his filing was a “substantial factor” in the employer’s decision to fire him.

The court acknowledged that no Utah case has ever addressed the substantial factor prong of the wrongful termination analysis “in any meaningful detail,” but the court said the use of the word “substantial” means the filing of the claim must have carried “considerable – as opposed to negligible – weight in the employer’s decision to terminate the employee.”

In negligence cases, the court noted, the word “substantial” is used “to denote the fact that the defendant’s conduct has such an effect in producing the harm as to lead reasonable men to regard it as a cause, using that word in the popular sense, in which there always lurks the idea of responsibility, rather than in the so-called philosophic sense, which includes every one of the great number of events without which any happening would not have occurred.”

In divorce cases, the court added, the term "substantially contributed" refers to "conduct that was a significant or an important cause of the divorce."

In the wrongful termination context, the court said, case law indicates that the employee’s burden under the substantial factor test does not require the employee to establish that retaliation was the sole motivation for termination or that the employer would not have terminated the employee but for the fact that the employee engaged in protected activity.

The court reasoned that the standard should be that “an employee may prevail on an unlawful termination claim if the employer fired the employee for multiple reasons, including the employee’s engagement in protected activity – but not where the protected activity, although perhaps a reason for termination, did not ultimately play an important role in the employer’s decision to fire the employee.”

The court also said that a worker is entitled to rely on circumstantial evidence to establish that his filing for workers’ compensation benefits was a substantial factor in the termination decision because it is highly unlikely that an employer will declare retaliation as the motive for discharge.

The court also said that inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence can give rise to triable issues of fact, and all reasonable inferences must be drawn in favor of the non-moving party when a motion for summary judgment is filed.

In this case, the court said, Medina presented evidence suggesting that his filing for workers’ compensation benefits was a substantial factor in JDCC’s decision to terminate him.

The court said the supervisor’s direction for Medina to leave the job site after being informed of the injury could reasonably be seen as a statement of frustration at the prospect of a forthcoming workers’ compensation claim. Such frustration “is certainly probative of JDCC’s attitude toward its employees seeking workers’ compensation benefits and possible motivation for terminating Medina for doing just that,” the court said.

The court also said the employer’s belief that Medina fabricated his account of being injured was relevant to the wrongful termination claim, given the relatively short time between his firing and JDCC’s assertion that he had never been hurt on the job.

The court said the fact that JDCC terminated Medina during his deposition supports an inference that it had done so in retaliation for his filing and pursuing a workers’ compensation claim as well.

“The record reflects JDCC’s frustration with Medina’s continued absences from work – at least many of which Medina attributed to his injury,” the court said. “And given this frustration, it is not unreasonable to infer that Medina missing work to attend a deposition in a case that JDCC allegedly believed to be fraudulent might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, causing JDCC to terminate his employment then and there.”

The court acknowledged that there might have been other, legitimate reasons for Medina’s termination, but, the court said, “the substantial factor test requires only that the protected activity be an important factor in the decision to discharge the employee.”

The court added that the temporal disconnect between Medina’s claim filing and his termination was relevant to the consideration of whether there was a causal connection between these events, but the passage of time alone does not prevent a worker from satisfying the substantial factor test.

Thus, the court concluded, Medina presented sufficient circumstantial evidence to support reasonable inferences that would satisfy the substantial factor test, and the district court erred in granting summary judgment to JDCC.

Disposition: Reversed and remanded.

To read the court’s decision, click here.