Workers Compensation and Employment Contracts

Texas Court Refuses to Strike Forum Selection Clause From Employment Contract
Affirms Dismissal of Retaliatory Discharge Claim Without Prejudice

Here’s What Happened
Welch, a Texas resident, signed an employment contract with Nightingale Nurses, LLC, a Florida company, to work as an EEG technician at a Texas hospital. She suffered a work-related injury and, when the pain became unbearable, sought treatment in the hospital’s emergency room.

She was advised to file a workers’ compensation claim and did so, also notifying her supervisor of the claim. Her supervisor indicated she needed to continue to work because the hospital was short-handed. Welch contacted her orthopedic surgeon, who hesitantly released her for light duty work.

In an affidavit, Welch contended that within four hours of giving notice of her light duty status, a nurse manager informed her that her employment contract was being cancelled and that she was being let go. She subsequently filed suit against her former employer for retaliatory discharge.

The former employer moved to dismiss, pointing to a contractual forum selection clause in Welch’s employment contract that required suit to be filed in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Welch countered on a number of grounds. In relevant part, she contended that her claim arose out of the workers’ compensation laws of Texas, that strong public policy considerations favored a determination of the issues within Texas courts and not in Florida, and that enforcement of this particular forum selection clause would be unreasonable and unjust.

The trial court dismissed the case without prejudice to file in Florida and Welch appealed.

Here’s How the Court Ruled
In Welch v. Nightingale Nurses, LLC, 2009 Tex. App. LEXIS 3822 (June 2, 2009), the Court of Appeals of Texas (Seventh District, Amarillo) affirmed, holding that Welch had not demonstrated that the forum selection clause was unenforceable due to fraud or overreaching, nor did Welch show that the selected forum would be seriously inconvenient for trial.

The court acknowledged that a forum selection clause is not binding and may be disregarded by a trial court if public policy strongly favored jurisdiction in a forum other than the one to which the parties had agreed. Here, there was no strong public interest involved.

Welch assumed Texas law would not be applied by the Florida court, indicated the court. That assumption was incorrect. The court indicated there was no cited authority supporting the idea that a contractual forum selection clause should be ignored in a workers’ compensation claim and the court declined to find that a “strong public policy” existed under these circumstances.

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law § 104.07.

Author: Tom Robinson, J.D.
Tom Robinson, J.D. is the primary upkeep writer for Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis) and Larson’s Workers’ Compensation, Desk Edition (LexisNexis). He is a contributing writer for California Compensation Cases (LexisNexis) and Benefits Review Board – Longshore Reporter(LexisNexis), and is a contributing author to New York Workers’ Compensation Handbook(LexisNexis). Attorney Robinson is an authority in the area of workers’ compensation and we are happy to have him as a Guest Contributor to Workers’ Comp Kit Blog. Tom can be reached at: [email protected].
http://law.lexisnexis.com/practiceareas/Workers-Compensation

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