통상임금소송에서 신의칙 적용 판단기준 - 대상판결: 울산지방법원 2018. 5. 30. 선고 2015가합2351 판결(현대중공업사건) -

Abstract

In the so-called 'additional legal allowances claim' cases, most lower-level courts have ruled whether or not the Good-faith Principle is applied on 'management index'. As the problem is identified, such 'management indices' or fact relationships cannot be a 'legal criterion' for determining whether to apply the Good-faith Principle. Futhermore, the critical reason why 'management indices' cannot be 'legal criteria' is that they have the contingency(Zufälligkeit) that forms the essence of 'management indices'. However, there are also lower courts that ruled whether the workers' additional allowances claim are contrary to the Good-faith Principle under the completely different criteria. The lower court is understood to be determining whether to violate the Good-faith Principle on the basis of the fundamental theory of the principle of good faith, the management indices resulted from additional statutory allowance claims, rather than the fact relationship that is, ex post, external and derived accidental. In particular, under the type of lower courts, the judicial discretion from looking at accidental situations or facts may be precluded. In any case, the judge may judge whether or not the Good-faith Principle is breached on the basis of "the essence of the principle," an explicit, determinative, and unified legal criterion. Most lower courts, including the ruling by the first trial of Kia Motors Corp., rule that 'independent, external, and derived contingency or factual relations' is the crucial legal criterion. In the case, it inevitably leads to the illegal judgment and conclusion. In contrast, the judgment of the first trial of the Hyundai Heavy Industries case had the correct and just understanding of the meaning of significant management difficulties or the risk of the business establishment, considered whether or not the Good-faith Principle is applied on the breach of mandatory provisions as the entire law and order and mutual relationship between the Good-faith Principle and mandatory provisions, and ruled the principle of prohibition of contradiction. Above all, the first trial of Hyundai Heavy Industries (II) determines that whether or not the application of the Good-faith Principle is based on the nature of the principle. Second, It is an extremely important judgment in that it only identified that the significant managerial difficulties that result in forecasting or predicting based on the digitized business indices or the confidence violated through the risk of corporate existence are the higher level of trust that is particularly legally protected. To sum up, like the first trial of Hyundai Heavy Industries, the judgments of other lower courts shall understand and apply the requirements of the decision of the Supreme Court panel of judges correctly and fairly. In other words, they shall judge whether or not there is ‘higher level of trust that is particularly legally protected’ as the legal criterion that is highly explicit, conclusive and unified' through distinguishing 'ex post, external, and derived accidental circumstances or facts' from legal criteria.