Legal Definitions - pretextus

Pretextus is a Latin term that refers to a pretext. In legal contexts, a pretext is a false reason or excuse given to justify an action, decision, or omission, while the true, often improper or unlawful, motive is concealed. It is essentially a cover story used to hide the real intention behind a particular course of conduct.

Here are some examples illustrating how the term "pretextus" applies:

• Employment Discrimination: An employer terminates an employee, stating the reason is "poor performance" and "budget cuts." However, the employee believes the true reason is their age or a protected characteristic, and they suspect the employer is using the stated reasons as a pretextus to avoid a discrimination lawsuit. If a court finds that the employer's stated reasons were not the real reasons for termination, but merely a cover for discriminatory intent, then those stated reasons would be considered a pretext.

• Law Enforcement: A police officer pulls over a vehicle for a minor traffic violation, such as a broken taillight. While the officer has a legal right to stop the vehicle for the violation, the driver later alleges that the officer's true motive was to investigate a hunch about drug activity, without having sufficient probable cause for that specific suspicion. In this scenario, the minor traffic violation would be considered a pretextus for the stop, meaning it was used as a lawful justification to pursue an unrelated and unsubstantiated suspicion.

• Contract Termination: A company decides to end a long-standing business contract with a vendor, citing "minor breaches of service level agreements" as the reason. The vendor, however, suspects that the company actually wants to switch to a new vendor owned by an executive's family member, and the alleged service breaches are merely a pretextus to justify breaking the existing agreement. If the court determines that the stated breaches were not significant enough to warrant termination and were used to conceal an improper motive, they would be considered a pretext.