Public policy wrongful discharge claim; Preemption; Stegall v Resource Tech Corp; The Whistleblower’s Protection Act (WPA); MCL 15.362; “Employee” (MCL 15.361(a)); Advanced Healthcare Hospital, d/b/a Pioneer Specialty Hospital (PSH)

The court held that the trial court erred in dismissing plaintiff-Hadden’s public policy wrongful discharge claim against defendant-Pine Creek as a matter of law. But her WPA claim against defendant-PSH was properly dismissed because she did not “establish a genuine dispute of material fact that she was” its employee. She had worked as a nurse at Pine Creek. After she was terminated from her employment there and filed suit, she applied for a position at PSH. She “stated that she did not know that PSH was also owned by” the same individual who owned Pine Creek through the same company. She asserted she was offered the job and accepted it but “she never received a start date for the job at PSH and no one would return her calls.” As a result, she filed an amended complaint adding a WPA retaliation claim against PSH. On appeal, the court agreed with Hadden that the trial court erred in dismissing her public policy wrongful termination claim against Pine Creek on the ground the WPA preempted it. The “Supreme Court has made clear that the WPA does not preempt claims like Hadden’s[.]” The WPA clearly did not apply “because she did not report and was not about to report a violation of law or regulation to a public body. Rather, Hadden reported her concern about inadequate nursing coverage to” Pine Creek’s director of nursing. “In contrast to a claim under the WPA, a claim that a discharge violates public policy may be premised on internal reports of a plaintiff’s good-faith belief about a violation of law or regulation. As” the Supreme Court recognized in Stegall, “this is so because limiting the public policy exception to external reports would not serve the welfare of state residents by protecting employees who report violations of law and because, if limited to public reports of wrongdoing, a claim that a discharge violated public policy would necessarily be preempted by the WPA. Because Hadden was not acting pursuant to the WPA, [it] does not provide an exclusive—or any—remedy to her wrongful discharge claim and” thus, could not “preempt her public policy tort claim.” But her WPA claim against PSH failed because all the evidence showed she “never performed work for PSH and was never an employee of PSH. Because Hadden was not an employee entitled to any protection from wrongful discharge under the WPA,” summary disposition was proper on this claim. Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.