An Oral Job Promise Is Not Void in Minnesota Because Nobody Wrote It Down — the Statute of Frauds Reaches Only Agreements That by Their Terms Cannot Be Performed Within One Year

The statute is one sentence and a four-item list

Minn. Stat. § 513.01, in the part that reaches an employment promise:

No action shall be maintained, in either of the following cases, upon any agreement, unless such agreement, or some note or memorandum thereof, expressing the consideration, is in writing, and subscribed by the party charged therewith:

(1) every agreement that by its terms is not to be performed within one year from the making thereof;

Read what it requires before reading what it bars. Not a contract — “some note or memorandum thereof” will do. Not signatures from both sides — only “the party charged therewith,” which in a suit against an employer means the employer. And the writing has to express “the consideration.”

Read what it bars just as narrowly. The clause is about an agreement that by its terms is not to be performed within a year. It is not about how long the job actually lasted, how long anyone expected it to last, or when the money was supposed to change hands.

The test is capability, not likelihood

Bussard is the Minnesota Supreme Court decision that put an oral permanent-employment promise outside clause (1). A priest who had transferred ownership of a magazine to a college alleged an oral condition that he would continue as its publisher. The college argued the statute of frauds and the parol evidence rule. At 224, on the first of those:

The statute of frauds is clearly not an impediment to plaintiff’s proof of an oral agreement. A contract of permanent employment is “performable within a year” because of the possibility of death within a year.

The logic is that a promise with no minimum term can be fully performed inside a year — by the employee dying, and, as later cases add, by other ordinary endings. Whether it was ever likely to end that soon is not the question.

Roaderick v. Lull Engineering Co., 296 Minn. 385 (1973), is the other side of the line. A sales manager alleged an oral agreement on salary and commissions, memorialized in an unsigned contract his own lawyer had drafted, which “provided for a minimum of 2 years’ employment.” Id. at 386. The employer kept the unsigned document in its files. At 388, after quoting clause (1):

The unsigned written contract which plaintiff alleges is the substance of the oral agreement provides for a minimum of 2 years’ employment. Therefore, unless an exception applies, no action can be maintained on the alleged oral agreement because of the statute of frauds.

The Court of Appeals later set the two decisions side by side. Eklund v. Vincent Brass & Aluminum Co., 351 N.W.2d 371, 375 (Minn. Ct. App. 1984):

In Roaderick, the employee’s alleged oral contract called for a minimum of two years’ employment. This contract literally could not be performed in less than one year. Even if the employee died within a year, the contract would not be performed in full. Therefore it was barred by the statute of frauds.

In Bussard, the employee’s alleged oral contract for permanent employment had no minimum term but was to last so long as the employee wished. This contract could be fully performed within a year …

The ellipsis marks the clause introducing Bussard’s quoted holding, which is set out above.

Eklund’s own facts show how far “capable of performance within a year” reaches. The employee alleged a promise that he would be retained as long as he performed satisfactorily and would complete his career with the company. The trial court held the statute of frauds barred proof of it. The Court of Appeals reversed, at 375–76:

Here, Eklund’s alleged contract for permanent employment until retirement, so long as he performed satisfactorily, could have been fully performed within one year under any of the following circumstances: (1) Eklund’s death, (2) Eklund voluntarily departed, or (3) Eklund failed to perform satisfactorily. The trial court erred in granting Vincent Brass summary judgment on the basis that the statute of frauds barred proof of Eklund’s oral contract of employment.

Three ordinary endings, any one of which would complete performance. That is the whole analysis.

Part performance does not fix a barred agreement

The most common argument against the bar is that the employee actually did the work, sometimes for years, and Roaderick rejected it at 388:

However, it is generally held that the uncompleted part performance of an oral contract for employment, not to be performed within 1 year, does not take the contract out of the statute of frauds. … Since the doctrine of part performance does not remove the oral contract from the statute of frauds, an action based on oral contract is foreclosed.

The ellipsis marks a citation to an annotation. Note the adjective the court used — “uncompleted” part performance. The opinion does not address an agreement that has been fully performed on one side, and neither does this page.

The claim that survived in Roaderick

Losing the contract claim did not end the case, and this is the part of Roaderick worth knowing. At 388:

It is well established, however, that in an action based on quantum meruit the reasonable value of services performed under an unenforceable oral contract of employment is recoverable even though the contract action is barred by the statute of frauds.

The court sent the commission claim to trial on that theory, subject to the employer’s accord-and-satisfaction defense — which it held was a fact question, because “the bonus payments were sporadic, were made in varying amounts, and were apparently made at the whim of the employer,” and because the employer’s own written statement said he “took the position of waiting to see if [plaintiff] was going to press demands as stated in his contract.” Roaderick, 296 Minn. at 389. It also applied a limitations period that cut the recoverable period back sharply, under the version of Minn. Stat. § 541.07 in force when the case was decided in 1973. This page does not state what that section says today; the current limitation periods that reach employment claims are collected on every Minnesota employment deadline in one table.

Quantum meruit is a claim for the reasonable value of services rendered. It is not a route to enforcing the promise, and Roaderick did not treat it as one.

The problem that is not the statute of frauds

Clearing § 513.01 gets an oral promise to the starting line and no further, because Minnesota construes an indefinite employment promise as terminable at will. Bussard, 294 Minn. at 223, describing the rule it traced to an earlier decision of its own, Skagerberg v. Blandin Paper Co., 197 Minn. 291, 266 N.W. 872 (1936) — a citation Bussard prints, and one checked against the Minnesota Reports for this page rather than carried over, though no proposition here rests on Skagerberg itself:

We there indicated adherence to the somewhat arbitrary rule of most jurisdictions that a contract for “permanent employment” will be construed to be terminable at the will of either party except in compelling circumstances …

The court described the compelling circumstances in the same sentence: where the employee in effect purchases the permanent employment by giving valuable consideration other than daily services, or otherwise gives up more than a person normally gives up on taking a new job. Bussard held that its plaintiff “clearly did furnish the valuable consideration contemplated by the existing rule,” id., which is why the case turned on the statute of frauds and the parol evidence rule instead.

That exception is narrow and it is not satisfied by moving, by turning down other work, or by staying a long time. What the handbook route does instead — and it is a contract route, with its own definiteness requirement — is on your handbook is not a contract until it is. The at-will default and the statutory exceptions to it are on was my firing illegal.

Promissory estoppel, and why the number is smaller

Grouse is the Minnesota decision for the promise that is withdrawn before the work starts. A pharmacist accepted an offer from Group Health, gave two weeks’ notice to his employer, and declined an offer from a Veterans Administration hospital. Group Health could not obtain a favorable written reference for him, hired someone else, and told him so when he called to say he was free to begin. Grouse, 306 N.W.2d at 115–16.

The court held there was no contract and applied Restatement of Contracts § 90 (1932), which it quoted at 116:

A promise which the promisor should reasonably expect to induce action or forbearance * * * on the part of the promisee and which does induce such action or forbearance is binding if injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise.

The asterisks are the opinion’s own ellipsis. Applying it, at 116: “Group Health knew that to accept its offer Grouse would have to resign his employment at Richter Drug. Grouse promptly gave notice to Richter Drug and informed Group Health that he had done so when specifically asked by Elliott. Under these circumstances it would be unjust not to hold Group Health to its promise.”

Then two limits, both on the same page. The first is on the scope of the holding:

The conclusion we reach does not imply that an employer will be liable whenever he discharges an employee whose term of employment is at will. What we do hold is that under the facts of this case the appellant had a right to assume he would be given a good faith opportunity to perform his duties to the satisfaction of respondent once he was on the job.

The second is on the money:

Since, as respondent points out, the prospective employment might have been terminated at any time, the measure of damages is not so much what he would have earned from respondent as what he lost in quitting the job he held and in declining at least one other offer of employment elsewhere.

A reliance measure, not an expectancy measure. Grouse quoted § 90’s own remedial sentence for the principle — “[t]he remedy granted for breach may be limited as justice requires” — and added its own: “Relief may be limited to damages measured by the promisee’s reliance.” Id.

The case was remanded for a new trial on damages alone, so the opinion says what the measure is and does not work an example.

Two questions this page does not answer

A promise of a bonus or commission payable more than a year out. The decisions retrieved for this page apply clause (1) to the term of employment — Roaderick’s two-year minimum, Bussard’s and Eklund’s indefinite terms. None of them decides whether a promise of a payment falling due more than a year after the agreement is separately within clause (1), and this page does not decide it either. What Minnesota statutes say about commissions once employment ends is a separate subject, on commissions after termination.

A fully performed agreement. Roaderick’s part-performance holding is expressly about “uncompleted part performance.” 296 Minn. at 388. The opinion does not reach full performance by one party, and neither does this page.

What this page does not do

It reads a statute and four decisions. It does not tell you whether anything you were told is enforceable, and the reason is that the hard questions here are factual: what the terms of the promise actually were, whether any writing exists that expresses the consideration and carries the employer’s signature, and whether anything was given up that a Minnesota court would call consideration beyond daily services. Those are answered from documents and testimony, not from a description of the rule.

Currency

The Revisor currently publishes the 2025 edition of Minnesota Statutes. The History line for § 513.01 reads, in full, “(8456) RL s 3483” — the section traces to the Revised Laws and the Revisor’s line records no later amendment. The Revisor’s table of Minnesota Statutes affected by session laws, queried for that exact section, returns no records at all. Bussard, Roaderick, and Grouse are Minnesota Supreme Court decisions; Eklund is a published Court of Appeals decision, and the Caselaw Access Project’s reporter header for it carries no subsequent-history notation. This page makes no representation about the later treatment of any of the four; a citator pass is not part of the verification behind it.