Wrongful Termination Case Study

Marcus Ashmore and Terrell Lee Green were maintenance workers for J.P. Thayer Co., Inc. under supervisor Gene Fye. After a particular incident of harassment on January 16, 2001, Plaintiffs reported Fye to Tricia Johnson, the Assistant Property Manager. At this time, Johnson did nothing about the complaint. The harassment continued, and on January 26, Plaintiffs complained to the Property Manager, Mary Frances de Rivera. In response, de Rivera verbally reprimanded Fye. This, however, did not stop Fye’s harassment. Instead of reporting the behavior to Defendant, Plaintiffs hired an attorney who wrote a letter to Defendant saying that Ashmore and Green were going to file charges of discrimination with the EEOC. On February 22, Fye was fired by Defendant. This came three days after getting the letter and about a month after the initial harassment complaints.

Message 4: It is not uncommon for an employee to be in disagreement with an employer’s decision to terminate employment. An alternative we may try is to set up a meeting of the workers peers and give them the facts of the situation and let them decide if the termination was wrongful. The group of peers would be persons from a location other than the employees own. These individuals would hear the facts of the case from both the businesses’ and the employees. In order to qualify the termination would need to meet certain criteria. It would be required to be an established company guideline or process for which the employee was terminated and store leadership must be able to present all documentation that lead to the termination. This would require leadership to have followed the processes leading to termination. For the employee it would let them have a voice in their termination and to hear whether their peers agree with the employer or the employee.

than $5.15 an hour. Overtime pay at a rate of not less than one and

By law, employers must compensate employees for work that is completed. If an employee is compensated by a salary, employees are compensated differently from those that may have an hourly compensation rate. Employees that are hourly employees get paid

Wrongful dismissal law suits arise when the employee feels as if he was not treated fairly and with dignity and respect. (Heathfield, S. M., 2016) In this case, Plaintiff Bilbo Baggins indicates that there is a “Just Cause” to terminate his contract immediately and let him go without notice. Typically, a “Just Cause” is existent when an employee is fired for just cause where he or she has been found to have been dishonest with the employer, such as theft of corporate property or in the participation of a competitor business. (Just Cause Definition, n.d.)

In a wrongful termination case, the terminated employee must prove more than having been treated unfairly, s/he must be able to prove one or more of his/her legal rights were violated” (Wrongful Termination Website, 2011). Employees in many states are at a disadvantage, possessing few rights, because of the employment at will rule, meaning employers can fire employees at any time and for no reason at all, just like employees can quit any time and for any reason. This makes the definition of wrongful termination extremely narrow.

Full-Time 9-Hour and 8-Hour Workday Employees: For each holiday, full-time 9-hour and 8-hour employees receive holiday pay for the number of hours they are regularly scheduled to work. When a holiday occurs on the employee's day off, the employee receives 8 hours of holiday pay or 8 hours of compensatory time.

Comp time should be granted to exempt employees as they are not entitled to overtime. An employer may reason that exempt employees are under more stress and therefore entitled to more vacation time (Benefit Package Differences for Exempt and Non-Exempt, 2010). The compensation package should comply with federal and state rules and regulations for exempt workers. The total compensation package should operate inside the organization’s budget and financial resources. The compensation package developed should be consistent, and at the same time very accommodating. It should be flexible enough to adapt to the current trends and

While discrimination in the workplace based on sex, race, national origin, and other such characteristics can certainly lead to wrongful termination, those types of claims are usually classified as a separate legal topic known as Title VII law (because they are based on protections found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Companies may not terminate their employee because of their nationality, color, race, gender, religion, age, disability, or pregnancy. For the most part, companies have policies set up to which they must abide to when wanting to terminate an employee. The employment status of the employee

8. Weekly overtime pay g. Amount & nature of exempt pay h. Weekly overtime pay

Wrong Termination Law provide compensation for damages. The damages include wage loss, emotional injury, punitive damages, and attorney's fees and litigation costs. The verdicts for wrongful termination is between $250,000 and 2,000,000 the reasons include the work life, benefit losses over that time, the trauma of unemployment, associated depression and

While smaller businesses operating on tighter budgets may find it expensive to pay overtime, the bigger companies with few employees on the managerial positions are capable of paying for overtime for the employees whose category will fall below the minimum exempt. Furthermore, all the options available for employers to handle the proposed rule should it come into effect will still benefit the American worker. One remedy is to follow the law and raise the annual salaries of employees who are overtime-exempt which will motivate workers who are already earning a salary close to that minimum (Rossheim, 2016). The second option is to re-classify workers as no-exempt, a move that would see the workers who are earning below the proposed exempt minimum qualify for overtime pay or reduce the workload for employees so that they only work for 40 hours in a week (Rossheim, 2016). The last option would be to hire more workers and avoid paying overtime which is a good move in providing employment for the unemployed. It is evident that the options available for employers would work towards improving employees’ welfare as well as saving the organization from the challenges of low remuneration.

1) There are several processes involved in a wrongful discharge. This is a fairly new and quickly expanding area that involves litigation, and this is an area that employers would rather avoid. About 65%-70% of worker’s are thought to be employees at will which means that an employer may fire an employee at any time for any reason, as long as the reason is lawful (Kavaler & Spiegel, 2003, p. 57). In order to avoid litigation employers push for arbitration to assist in settling cases. State laws determine if arbitration is allowed (Kavaler & Spiegel, 2003, p. 58). The risk management director will explore

When deciding if an employee is eligible for overtime pay and minimum wage, supervisors would be declaring employees as either exempt or nonexempt. According to www.nolo.com, “An employee who meets the requirements of an exemption category under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or under state law, which typically apply only to white collar employees who receive a certain minimum salary. Exempt employees are not entitled to extra pay for overtime hours.” Exempt employees often receive a salary per year that is segregated into weekly or bi-weekly payments based off of an average 40-hour work week. With salaried employees, supervisors may agree upon flex schedules where an employee may work a predetermined amount of hours per

The “good faith” exception states that employers may only terminate an employment relationship based on good faith. Terminations based on bad faith or terminations motivated by malicious intent are thereby prohibited with this exception. Susan and the Human Resource Department need to investigate Phil’s personal vendetta against Susan’s boss to assure that a bad faith claim cannot be claimed in case of employment separation.