## Facts

- Ten Carter County deputy sheriffs were at-will employees working in the sheriff’s office through the county’s Board of County Commissioners.
- The Board adopted and distributed a county personnel handbook intended to set uniform personnel policies for county employees.
- The handbook stated that law-enforcement personnel would receive overtime pay, and the deputies asserted that other sheriff’s office employees received overtime and holiday pay under the handbook.
- The deputies alleged the handbook’s overtime and holiday provisions became part of their employment agreement and that the county breached that agreement by refusing to pay those benefits.
- The Board denied contractual liability, relying on handbook disclaimer language stating it was not a contract and arguing the overtime provisions did not apply to deputy sheriffs.
- The Board also suggested the claim was, in substance, an unpreserved federal wage claim; the deputies maintained the action was based only on state contract law.

## Issues

1. Whether a county personnel handbook may supply enforceable terms of an at-will employment relationship, despite disclaimer language, based on the handbook’s language, distribution, and the county’s practices.
2. Whether summary judgment for the county was proper where disputes remained about (a) whether the handbook created contractual obligations and (b) whether its overtime/holiday provisions applied to deputy sheriffs.
3. Whether the deputies were impermissibly pursuing a federal overtime theory not presented below, rather than a state-law contract claim.

## Decision

- The Oklahoma Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the Court of Civil Appeals’ opinion, reversed the district court’s summary judgment for the Board, and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held summary judgment for the county was erroneous because genuine disputes of material fact remained on the contract-formation and contract-coverage questions.
- The court treated the case as a state-law breach-of-contract dispute and rejected the Board’s characterization of the claim as an FLSA-based overtime action as unsupported by the record.

## Legal Principles

- Summary judgment is improper when material facts are genuinely disputed; the court may not resolve fact-dependent contract questions as a matter of law on an undeveloped record.
- In Oklahoma, an employer’s written personnel policies may become terms of an at-will employment relationship depending on the document’s language, distribution, and the parties’ conduct and practices.
- Disclaimer language in a personnel handbook does not automatically eliminate the possibility of enforceable obligations; whether the handbook creates contractual rights may present a fact question.
- A claim framed and supported as a state-law contract action is analyzed under state contract and employment principles, even if federal wage-and-hour rules might also exist in the background.

## Conclusion

The court reversed summary judgment because the record left unresolved fact questions about whether the county’s personnel handbook created enforceable overtime and holiday pay obligations and whether those provisions applied to deputy sheriffs, requiring remand for fact-finding and further proceedings.


Russell v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs, 952 P.2d 492 (Okla. 1997)