Continuing our series on SC Employee Handbook Cases:

Following the retroactivity decision in Toth, the SC Supreme Court next took up the case of Epps v. Clarendon County, a case with political overtones. The employee in Epps claimed alternatively that he was fired in violation of his employee handbook-cum - contract, and that he was fired because he was politically affiliated with a supervisor’s rival. The court’s opinion focused mostly on the political aspects of the case and dispensed of the rest of the claims, including the handbook claim, by reasserting the existence of the employment at will doctrine.

In 1991, the Court of Appeals explored the concept of disclaiming the existence of the “handbook as contract” in Johnson v. First Carolina Financial Corp. In that case, the handbook in question had two provisions specifically disclaiming the employee’s contractual rights to employment and affirming the employer’s rights to terminate the employee at will. Additionally, the employer had each employee sign a notice acknowledging that the employee handbook was not a contract.  Thus, the employee had no expectation of contractual rights to his job.