the situation
You have an employee who has been acting somewhat disgruntled. One
night, after hours, you come across an envelope on her desk with your
name on it that contains a letter saying that she is resigning and her
last day will be in two weeks. She shows up in the morning and you tell
her that you are accepting her resignation effective immediately. She
then seeks unemployment benefits—could you be on the hook?
the ruling
Perhaps so, according to a court in Fairfax facing a similar set of
facts. Harvey v. Virginia Employment Commission, Case No. CL-2016-4653
(July 20, 2016). Darlene Harvey worked as a bookkeeper for an
accountant in Herndon, Virginia for about five and a half years. Harvey
was thinking about quitting and one day, wrote a letter of
resignation—saying that she was resigning and her last day would be in
two weeks. She put the letter in an envelope with her boss’s name on it
and left it on her desk without giving it to him. She came back to
work the next day and did not give him the letter. The next night, the
employer saw the letter and opened it. When Harvey came to work the
next day, the letter was gone, her desk had been cleared out and she did
not have access to the computer network. She was told that her
resignation was accepted, effective immediately.
Harvey submitted a claim for unemployment benefits. The employer
claimed that she had voluntarily resigned. The Virginia Employment
Commission ended up finding that even though she had not actually
delivered her resignation notice, she had left the envelope on top of
her desk with her boss’s name on it and thus had meant for him to find
it—so she had tendered her resignation. But because the employer did
not let her work the two week notice period (and she was willing to do
so), she was entitled to benefits for just that period. Harvey then
appealed to the circuit court.
The circuit court ended up disagreeing with the Virginia Employment
Commission and found that Harvey was not just limited to those two weeks
of benefits because she had not given notice of her resignation.
Giving notice would require the employee to “take some step or
affirmative action by granting, bestowing, putting into possession,
transferring, conveying, delivering or offering the notice of
resignation to his or her employer.” Harvey, p. 7.
Here, the court concluded, Harvey did not take any such affirmative
action. She did write her employer’s name on the envelope and put the
envelope on her desk, but she did not post mark it, put it in a mailbox,
leave the letter on her employer’s desk, hand deliver the letter to her
employer, or directly talk to her employer about the letter. It was
only because of the “coincidental” discovery of the letter that Harvey
was terminated. The employer’s finding of the resignation letter did
not constitute giving notice.
the point
This case was specifically focused on the effect of the question of
whether an employee had resigned would have on her entitlement to
unemployment benefits. But the question of whether an employee quits or
is terminated involuntarily can be important in other contexts as
well. Depending on the circumstances, it might be important to avoid
jumping the gun when an employee threatens to quit and even takes pretty
clear steps toward resigning.
Originally posted to Virginia Employer Law Blog, by Elaine Inman Hogan on August 3, 2016.