It was early morning at Provost & Umphrey, and like many days, I showed up before 7:00 a.m., hoping to catch our boss, the legendary Walter Umphrey, over coffee before the workday began. That day, he had a client he wanted me to see: Michael Hauck, a deckhand who had been fired for refusing to perform an illegal act. I had just enough time to review the law on at-will employment. In Texas, for over 100 years an employer could fire an employee for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all as long as the termination didn’t violate a statutory exception. It was harsh, it was employer-friendly, and on paper, it seemed like Michael didn’t stand a chance.
Michael’s story was compelling. He worked on a Sabine Pilot boat in Port Arthur, Texas. This was a physically grueling job that involved operating winches, securing mooring lines, and helping ferry pilots to the oil tankers get safely into port. One of his tasks, assigned in the dead of night, was to pump bilge oil into the Sabine Ship Channel. We viewed this as a clear violation of federal law. A Coast Guard placard in the engine room warned that putting oil in the waterways was illegal. Michael spoke up, called the Coast Guard, and confirmed that the activity was illegal. When he refused, he was promptly fired. The defendant denied that this was the reason he was fired.
I explained to Walter the bleak reality: Texas law offered almost no protection for at-will employees like Michael. He wasn’t in a protected class,...
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