Andrews v. HCR Manor Care Medical Services of Florida, LLC
Opinion
Opinion
MEMORANDUM
Plaintiff-Appellant Sabrina Andrews (“Andrews”) appeals a judgment of Judge Robert C. Jones of the District of Nevada granting the motion to dismiss her amended complaint (“Complaint”) for failure to state a tortious discharge claim. Andrews also appeals Judge Jones’s denial of her request to amend the Complaint to add a claim under Nevada Revised Statute (“NRS”) 449.207 for alleged violation of NRS 449.205. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.
We presume that Andrews was an at-will employee for the purposes of this appeal because she does not allege otherwise. The Nevada Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to recognize tortious discharge actions by at-will employees except in “those rare and exceptional cases where the employer’s conduct violates strong and compelling public policy.” Wayment v. Holmes, 112 Nev. 232 , 912 P.2d 816, 818 (1996). Andrews’s termination by Defendant-Appellee HCR Manor Care Medical Services of Florida, LLC for refusing to shower a sick patient does not implicate any strong public policy exception that the Nevada Supreme Court has recognized, and we decline to create one here.