California Wrongful Termination Lawyers

There are times when I talk to an employee, who, out of the blue, was terminated. There was no notice. They were just asked to come into a room and, at that point, they were being told they were being terminated. Under California law, employees are considered what’s called at-will, that you can be terminated for any reason, as long as it’s not an unlawful reason, and there’s no notice requirement. While, typically, you as the employee could quit today and not show up tomorrow, an employer can do the same thing to you. They could terminate you today with the expectation that they never see you again. With regards to the amount of notice that they’re required to give, there is actually no notice requirement under California law.

While the vast majority of employees in California don’t have contracts, there are some employees in California that actually do have contracts. Some of those contracts are for specific time periods: one year, or for a specific job. The question comes up as to if they can terminate that contract. It really is a fact-intensive question about reading the contract and trying to figure out whether or not the employer could have you stop working, and whether or not that has an impact on whether or not they have to pay you out for the rest of the contract or for some specific period of time in the future. Sometimes, the contract have just cause provisions that say if they terminate you for just cause, they can cancel the contract. What’s clear in California is that, regardless of whether or not you have an employment contract or you’re considered at-will, all employees, both contract employees and at-will employees, are protected under California law from wrongful termination, unlawful harassment, and discrimination.

We recently had a case that went all the way through trial. We spent two years with the person, getting to know her claims and getting to know her case, getting to know her child, getting to know her family, and then spending three weeks with her at trial, and getting a verdict that made her whole. We received a nice letter. I received a handwritten thank you note from her about what the firm meant to her. When I look back at the case, it reminds me how important it is that you look for a firm that can take care of you from the day that they pick up the phone call, all the way through to the end.

I spend a lot of time talking to potential clients about the fact that they felt like they were wrongfully terminated from their employer. We talk about what happened at work – when did they start working there? How long did they work there? How did their employment end, and why did their employment end? It’s important to note that in California law, it is unlawful to wrongfully terminate somebody for an unlawful reason. Sometimes terminations are just unfair. Sometimes, you work for a supervisor that is unkind, arbitrary, irrational, and they terminate you. Not every time that you get terminated, despite how wrongful it felt or how wrongful it truly was, is it necessarily unlawful.

I’m often told by a potential client that they were wrongfully terminated and they want to sue their employer, or, at the very least, they want to know what their rights are regarding their former employer. We hear the term wrongful termination a lot, just in our daily lives, whether you’re an attorney or not. For the attorney, it’s important for us to slow down and try to figure out if it was not only wrongful, but also unlawful. Was it an unlawful termination? There’s a lot of statues in California that protect employees. Those statutes prohibit an employer from retaliating against employees and discriminating against employees, so it’s important to realize that you do have a lot of protections.

One issues that comes up when an employee was terminated is whether or not they can collect unemployment benefits. In California, the standard as to whether or not you can file for unemployment benefits is actually a pretty employee-friendly standard that relates to whether or not you engaged in misconduct while at work. That standard is going to be read rather narrowly. Just because you got terminated from your employment, doesn’t mean that you’re not entitled to unemployment benefits.

A lot of times when I meet with a new client after they’ve been terminated and we’re going to take their case, the question is, “Now what? Where do I go from here?” One of the things that we discuss is you needing to take care of yourself and your family. I encourage people to file for unemployment. The fact that your employer has terminated you doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to unemployment. In fact, if you were wrongfully terminated, the employer shouldn’t be able to wrongfully terminate and claim that you’re not entitled to unemployment.

Last month we were trying a case in San Bernardino Superior Court, and in that case we were seeking specific damages. The reality is, for most of our cases, we’re seeking very similar, if not the same, damages. In a wrongful termination case, those damages are typically characterized in these categories. One, emotional distress. What was the emotional distress of losing the job? What impact did it have on your daily life, your monthly life? The sleepless nights, the anger, the frustration, the self-doubt – all of those issues are part of your emotional distress, and we ask a jury to compensate you for that. It’s not exactly clear as to what that is, but we do ask the jury to put a dollar figure on that. That includes both past emotional distress, and we also ask them about future emotional distress. The impact that the termination had on you or will have on you in the future is called future emotional distress.