Prometheus: A Social Justice Law Firm provides intelligent and aggressive legal expertise to employees and employers in Wrongful Termination lawsuits, arbitration, and mediation hearings in California state and Federal Courts, including the Federal District Court for Northern California, the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, the California Supreme Court, and California Superior Courts in and around San Francisco, San Rafael, Walnut Creek, Oakland, Hayward, Redwood City, Palo Alto, San Jose, Pleasanton, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, California. Our San Francisco Bay Area Employment Attorney, Mr. Aly Ebrahimzadeh, Esq., provides General Counsel representation to businesses and legal representation for employees in wrongful termination lawsuits, retaliatory termination, employment contract preparation, employee brochure drafting, business practice review to prepare litigation prevention strategies, and company brochures and legal presentations for employers and employees concerning sexual harassment law, hostile work environment, discrimination law, and at-will employment contracts.
It is generally understood that an employer who fires a contracted employee in California may be liable for monetary damages due to the the employer’s breach of contract, especially where the termination is for no cause or for unjust reasons. California Employment Law attorneys have strengthened the protections also available for employees in at-will employment relationships (e.g, an employee working without a fixed-term contract or any explicit assurances of job security) during the last several decades of employment litigation. An employer may be liable for substantial monetary damages for the wrongful termination of an at-will employee if the employer fires the employee in a manner that violates public policy, breaches an implied contract, breaches an explicit written contract, breaches the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing that is an implicit part of every contract, or violates a California employment statute or a federal employment law, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Paid Family Leave Law of California, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, and the California Family Rights Act.
California Public Policy Against Wrongful Termination
California and federal public policy focuses on protecting the public from violations of law in the workplace. Therefore, if an employer fires an employee for failing to break the law, if an employer fires an employee based on the employer’s discrimination due to the employee’s race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, age, ethnicity, national origin, or disability, or if the employer fires an employee due to the employee’s pregnancy and need for maternity leave or paternity leave or due to the employee’s need for a family emergency leave or other medical leave, even if the employee is working under an explicit at-will employment relationship, the employer may likely be violating California wrongful termination law. Further, if an employee suffers from a hostile work environment caused by other employees, managers, or the employer herself, and if the employer does not take sufficient legal steps to immediately resolve such problems, the employee may be able to bring a wrongful termination lawsuit for constructive discharge, meaning that the employer’s negligence gave the employee no other option but to quit the job, and so the employee may successfully argue that he was for all intents and purposes constructively terminated. Similarly, if an employer fires a contracted or at-will employee for whistleblowing activities, such retaliatory discharge is also illegal. An employee cannot be legally fired for reasonably complaining about sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, or discrimination in the workplace, as all such complaints must be promptly and sincerely investigated and resolved by the employer.
Implied Contracts and California Wrongful Termination Lawsuits
An employer may inadvertently create an implied contract with an otherwise at-will employee, thereby making no-cause terminations of that employee a violation of California employment law. If an employer promises job security to an employee by giving the employee verbal assurances that he will not be fired unless he “does something wrong,” for example, absent a clear employee brochure or contract that has been provided to the employee disclaiming any such assurances from being construed as an alteration of the employee’s at-will status, the employer’s subsequent no-cause termination may be grounds for a California wrongful termination lawsuit. Even in the fact of a written disclaimer, an employee may be able to assert a claim for wrongful termination against the employer, suggesting that the employer modified or waived the disclaimer language in the employee brochure, and that the employee relied upon the employer’s assurances to the extent that he passed up other job offers, for example. An employer must be very careful to not create implied contracts, either verbal or written in any communications with his employees. Our Wrongful Termination Lawyer, Mr. Aly Ebrahimzadeh, Esq., offers employment transaction legal expertise to employers in the San Francisco Bay Area to help them prevent forming implied contracts and otherwise confusing or wrongfully terminating their at-will employees. We also represent employees who have been terminated in breach of an implied contract.
California Wrongful Termination and Implied Good Faith
Every employment contract in California has an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. This means that the covenant of good faith exists in every contract, even if it is not explicitly written in the contract itself. The law reads this covenant into every contract as a matter of protecting all parties to a contract from bad faith actions of either party. An at-will employee may be wrongfully terminated if the employer discharges the employee in bad faith. For example, if the employer fires the employee for validly complaining about sexual harassment at work, or about other legal violations by the employer, this is an example of wrongful termination due to the employer’s breach of the good faith covenant in the employment contract. Also, if an employer fires for no cause a long-term at-will employee to whom it gave repeated verbal assurances of job security and consistent good performance reviews, the employer may be liable for wrongful termination in a California lawsuit if the employee was fired as a mere pretext to avoid giving that employee a pension or other retirement benefit that the employee was very close to earning. The California employer’s termination of the long-standing at-will employee in this case may arguably “shock the conscience” and be considered as nothing short of bad faith and malice. For such reasons, we offer wise legal counsel to employers in and around San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Santa Cruz, California to help them through such tough employment decisions. We also represent employees in wrongful termination lawsuits involving a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
For a full initial consultation regarding your particular wrongful termination lawsuit or employment transaction, please visit our Consultation webpage. We are committed to providing the very legal representation to Employers and Employees, Plaintiffs or Defendants, in Wrongful Termination lawsuits and other Employment Law matters in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Monterey Bay Area, including Napa County, Marin County, Alameda County, Santa Clara County, and Santa Cruz County, California. To read more about our California Employment Law attorney, Mr. Aly Ebrahimzadeh, Esq., please visit his complete professional profile on our website.
