You deserve to be safe in your workplace. All too often, though, employers terminate employees for illegal reasons, including for discriminatory purposes and as retaliation for reporting harassment and other wrongdoing at work. If that’s happened to you, then you’re probably facing significant financial hardship, and your career growth may be stunted. To protect your interests and your future, you may have to take legal action in the form of a wrongful termination claim.
How can you build your wrongful termination case?
Wrongful termination claims are intricate, and you need persuasive evidence to back up your arguments if you hope to succeed. With that in mind, as you prepare to navigate your case, you should do the following:
- Gather documentation pertaining to your work performance: Your employer is going to claim that your termination was justified. To do so, they might paint you in a bad light, such as having a poor performance history or excessive absenteeism. By gathering relevant documentation, you might be able to contradict these claims. So, make sure you have copies of your performance appraisals, complimentary emails and text messages, and anything else that shows the solid work you performed for your employer.
- Gather complaint records: If you were wrongfully terminated because you reported discrimination, harassment, or some other form of wrongdoing, then you should retain records related to any complaints that you made to your employer. Be sure to keep any responses from your employer, too. This can help lay the foundation for the retaliation.
- Talk to witnesses: There are probably several witnesses who observed issues leading to your wrongful termination. This could include co-workers who heard you being harassed or discriminated against, as well as those who saw how your termination played out behind closed doors. You need to talk to these witnesses, write down their accounts, and secure their contact information so that you can subpoena them to testify in your case, if needed.
- Scrutinize your termination letter: If your employer provided you with a letter upon your termination, then it should contain the justification for your firing. Carefully analyze the language that your employer used and what they claim you did. This can give you direction as you build arguments that contradict the termination letter’s assertions.
- Track your damages: Remember, even if you can prove that your employer acted wrongly, you’re not going to recover compensation unless you can show your damages. Therefore, track your damages as fully as possible. Keep pay stubs from your job, retain receipts and invoices tied to new job training or education that you undertook to get new employment, and maintain a journal of how your job loss made you felt on a daily basis. These records can go a long way toward proving the full extent of your damages.
Keep in mind that these are just some of the steps that you can take to build your wrongful termination case. Carefully analyze the facts of your case so that you can identify other actions you can take to position yourself for success.
Don’t leave your wrongful termination case to chance
If you want to protect your career, your financial stability, your emotional wellbeing, and your future, then you’ll want to prepare an aggressive wrongful termination case. That’s going to require knowing the law and how to effectively apply it to the circumstances of your case. To learn more about how to do that, continue reading up on wrongful termination legal action and what you can do to build your case.