Posted on 09/24/2014 6:34:02 AM PDT by marktwain
Jeremy Hoven is a pharmacist who worked at Walgreens in Benton Township, Michigan. He had complained about security at the store after a robbery in 2007, and had obtained a concealed carry permit. In 2011, at 4:30 a.m. on May 8th, he defended himself against armed robbers who had entered the store, taken a manager hostage, and who had tried to shoot him. It was all captured on a dramatic video.
Link to Video
Halfway down article
Township police Lt. Delman Lange, after reviewing surveillance video, told the local paper, "If it was me, I would have done the same thing."Eight days later, Hoven was fired from his $150,000 a year job at Walgreens. Four months after being fired, in September of 2011, he filed a wrongful employment lawsuit, contending that Walgreens had violated his right to self defense.
Hoven filed a lawsuit against Walgreens claiming his firing violated his self-defense rights and his rights to carry a concealed weapon. The court disagreed, citing Hoven’s status as an at-will employee who could be fired at any time, for any reason.
He should’ve declared that he was a trans-gendered Muslim, he would’ve not been fired. s/
The man had a right to defend himself, but he was an at-will employee. As much as I disagree with Walgreens, they had a right to fire him.
The problem is that the local pharmacies ,like many other small businesses,cannot afford a full-time employee dedicated to keeping the company in compliance with all the government regulations;but large corporations can spread the cost of a compliance person over multiple locations.Regulations favor the larger corporations for this reason and it is why large corporations push for MORE regulation.
Those large corporations are very much more likely to be hostile to CCW holders and every corporate employee handbook I have seen has flatly prohibited ANY weapons at all company sites with an exception for on-duty police.Corporation lawyers argue that they can be sued and lose huge sums if an armed employee shoots anyone but they can’t be held liable for random acts of criminals not employed by the corporation;therefore it is better for the bottom line to prohibit employee,vendor, and vistor weapons by policy.That the policy deters no killers bothers the lawyers and insurance writers not one bit.
The pharmacist may have great difficulty finding another job as big chains like Walgreens ,CVS,etc. have replaced the neighborhood pharmacy all over America.
Back when I was a Pharmacy Intern I worked at 7 mile and Woodward.
Tough neighborhood.
One day I came in and asked where the regular Pharmacist was and they told me he was shot. I quit.
I worked in Hospital Pharmacies after I graduated until I realized just how boring the job was and went back to Michigan to be an Engineer.
There are limits to the reasons they can fire him. They couldn’t legally fire him for converting to islam.
I wonder if they would have posthumously fired him after he was shot down defending himself along with those other people?
He argued the case wrong, it was a violation of a protected civil right under the 2nd. They cannot fire at-will employees because of race gender religion, etc so why should they be able to fire a person who has a constitutional protected right to self-defense?
I think that is the tact that he used: the company violated his right to self-defense.
I may be established by court eventually, but obviously these courts did not recognize it.
Or did the manager sue Walgreens?
HE filed the wrong case. He needs to sue for endangerment and the failure of Walgreens to provide adequate security which placed his life in danger.
$150,000 per year salary. That is a good salary plus you get some excitement on occasion like a shootout.
Except that he's not. There are tons of reasons for which they might want to fire him (or not hire him) but are not legally allowed to. If the goverment has decided to stick their nose in tent of deciding on acceptable reasons for termination of employment, how can personal safety not be one of them??
Even looking specifically at the issue of workplace safety, the onerous things OSHA demands of companies and workers suppposedly in the interests of preventing injury to workers are the job are ludicrous, sometimes so over-the-top that they actually make the job more dangerous. Yet NOW, only when the issue involves firearms, we suddenly discover respect for people's right to contract???
So I guess my point is that the ruling is correct, but is still wrong until we roll back all the other, far less reasonable intrusions into the employer-employee relationship.
$150,000 per year in 1954 dollars is $1,326,312 per year. Not shabby at all.
Of course she would go on to own her own studios that were worth...
Having only glanced at the headline, I thought he had been convicted in the shooting.........
Pharmacists are like programmers, high paid gypsies in high demand and who jump from job to job depending on the pay.........
Yea, he'll get another job but it sucks to be fired from one for what he did.........
Being an "at will" state does have its disadvantages........
He lost but there’s a way to make sure Walgreen’s doesn’t win. Stop shopping at Walgrens and let them know why you’re stopping. And tell them, let us know, when they change their policy and you’ll return to being a Walgreen’s customer.
Then follow through.
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