Jeffrey M. Janes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Dba Sam's Club, and Gary Dawes

Wal-Mart appeals the district court judgment following a jury verdict in favor of its ex-employee, Jeffrey Janes, in a wrongful termination suit. Alleging the existence of an implied-in-fact contract with Wal-Mart not to terminate him except for good cause, Janes claims that Wal-Mart breached this contract by firing him after he cooked and ate expired meat taken from Wal-Mart’s waste barrel. Specifically, Wal-Mart appeals the district court’s denial of its motions for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial.

Wal-Mart claims that the district court erred by (1) excluding, as unduly prejudicial, evidence that Janes was fired from a previous retail job for stealing; (2) failing to hold that Janes’s signed employment application providing for at-will employment could not, as a matter of law, be modified by an implied-in-fact agreement to terminate only for cause; and (3) failing to hold that Wal-Mart had good cause to terminate Janes because of his theft of expired meat. We affirm.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

On September 12,1990, Janes completed an application to work as a meat cutter at PACE Membership Warehouse. That application contained an at-will employment…