Carl v. Children's Hospital, 702 A.2d 159 (1997)

Citation: Carl v. Children's Hospital, 702 A.2d 159 (1997)
Parent Document: Carl v. Children's Hospital, 702 A.2d 159 (1997)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 1997-09-23
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2395626/carl-v-childrens-hospital/ ↗

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The once firmly enshrined socioeconomic assumptions underlying the at-will doctrine also appear quite unrealistic today. “[W]hen viewed in the context of present-day economic reality and the joint, reasonable expectations of employers and their employees, the ‘freedom’ bestowed by the rule of law on the employee may indeed be fictional.” Cleary v. American Airlines, 111 Cal.App.3d 443, 168 Cal.Rptr. 722, 725 (1980). “The industrial revolution [has] made an anachronism of the absolute right of discharge by destroying the classical ideal of complete freedom of contract upon which it is based.” Blades, supra, 67 Colum.L.Rev. at 1418 (footnote omitted). “The system of ‘free’ contract described by nineteenth century theory is now coming to be recognized as a world of fantasy, too orderly, too neatly contrived and too harmonious to correspond with reality.” John P. Dawson, Economic Duress and the Fair Exchange in French and German Law, 11 Tul. L. Rev. 345 (1937). As the court stated in Smith, supra,

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