Q We have an employee over age 65 who has been a manager for over 40 years and has excellent evaluations in his file. Recently we have learned that his department is possibly committing fraud in their documentation of paperwork.
He doesn’t abide by company policy, doesn’t meet deadlines, and has been written up one time for sexual harassment. Can we terminate him without fearing a wrongful termination lawsuit?
A The fact is, there is often nothing you can do to avoid a wrongful termination claim. The real question is whether the termination is defensible in a legal proceeding. It sounds like you have legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons that justify the employee’s termination. Make sure you have meaningfully investigated each of his transgressions and the results are well documented. It is equally important that you treat the employee the same way you treat other workers who engage in similar misconduct. If other employees in the department engaged in the same conduct, they should be subject to the same punishment. If you have done those things, you should have a solid defense to a lawsuit.
Jonathan C. Sterling is an attorney with Carlton Fields Jorden Burt in Hartford, Connecticut. He may be contacted at jsterling@cfjblaw.com.
I think this case is fraught with problems that would make termination chancy and a wrongful termination case hard to defene. True that the reasons are non-discriminatory; but if failure to abide by policy and does not meet deadlines have been allowed to continue without check, and the evaluations in the face of those problem areas have been excellent, then all this case shows me is a possibility that his department is falsifying documents. Clearly, an in-depth investigation should be conducted but I would stick to the fraudulent reporting matter and stay about as far away from the other transgressions as I could. Simply; the company has allowed them to continue without check which sends the message that there was no problem.
Start from square 1 and go from there.