WI Employee Rights Lawyer: Severance, Wages, Job Termination, Discrimination

Many employees with legal complaints attend mediation at EEOC or another agency on their own, without a lawyer.  This article describes ways a lawyer could help in mediation, and reasons to consider getting one.

As a lawyer, I obviously have a bias toward telling employees to get a lawyer. But note that arguments for “a” lawyer mean ANY competent employee rights attorney (not necessarily me).  Also note that the potential benefits of a lawyer below must be weighed against the lawyer’s potential fees, especially if the lawyer asks for out-of-pocket fees and will not work on a contingency basis where he or she is only paid via a percentage of winnings.

One way a lawyer can help you in mediation is to evaluate your case’s merits and evidence. Often, and understandably, workers are not aware of what factors make for a good case. For example, many workers feel that strong performance reviews (documents) are strong evidence in a discrimination case. In reality, such reviews can be helpful on occasion, but are generally a secondary form of evidence. Strong evidence in a discrimination case would be documents, emails or recordings that show discriminatory statements or conduct by management toward the complainant worker.  Quite often, I encounter workers who misunderstand what types of actions are and are not “discriminatory”, and what types of evidence are and are not helpful. An attorney can help a worker better understand his or her case’s evidence, and in what respects the case’s merits are strong or weak.  Having an understanding of the merits is directly useful in mediation and settlement-discussion leverage.

A second way a lawyer can help you in mediation is to evaluate your case value. It’s hard to settle a case reasonably if you– and the opposing party– don’t have a realistic idea of what your case is worth.  In my experience, employees who try to evaluate their own cases’ valuations are usually wildly wrong. Not because they aren’t smart or didn’t do their research. Rather, folks are usually very wrong because they lack experience in employment law, don’t know all the potential claims, don’t know all the categories of money (damages) that can be won, don’t know standard ranges of settlements for similar cases, and don’t understand how risks affect their cases’ valuations (i.e. risks of losing, of partially winning, of spending your own money, etc.).  For example, an employee may decide his case is worth at least a $100,000 settlement because of how “unfair” the employer’s discharge of the employee was. However, this perception of “unfairness” will not be compelling to a judge or mediator, who will need to hear arguments about very specific laws and penalties to be persuaded to recommend a given dollar value, especially a high one. If an experienced employment attorney evaluates your case, the potential valuation and/or settlement recommendation he or she makes will likely be much different than what you had concluded on your own.  An attorney would be able to describe the reasons why that valuation or settlement range is appropriate.  If you go into mediation with an attorney who is able to explain a well-reasoned and credible case valuation, this will likely impress the mediator and opponent (whether they say so or not), and help facilitate a reasonable settlement.

A third way a lawyer can help you in mediation is to add credibility to your case. Fair or not, most opponent-employers do not take an employee-complainant’s case seriously unless the employee has a lawyer.  I suspect many mediators feel the same. Without a lawyer, if your case does not settle, you will likely lack the legal skills to take your case the full way to a hearing and appeal. Employers know this. So they make lowball settlement offers to employees who do not have attorneys. A mediator can try to convince the employer not to stick with a final offer that’s unrealistically low. But I would bet that most mediators view cases without employee-attorneys to have lower values than those with attorneys. So employers are likely to make lower offers, and mediators are more likely to think your case has a lower value, if you don’t have an attorney and don’t appear capable of taking your case all the way to a legal conclusion if it doesn’t settle.

A fourth way a lawyer can help you in mediation is to provide distance between you, the mediator and your opponent. To explain: litigation is emotional, and emotions are often the biggest barrier to discussing a reasonable settlement. A lawyer represents your interests, but is NOT of course the same person as you. So the opponent employer will likely be more open to what your lawyer says (assuming your lawyer acts professionally, as most do) than to what you say (given your prior direct involvement and negative history with the employer).  I have found that mediators also appreciate having a lawyer present, as a middle-man or – woman, to serve as a go between between your opponent, the mediator (a neutral party) and yourself. The mediator and lawyers are kind of buffers between the opposing parties, and can simmer some of the emotions in those buffering roles.

I hope this information was of some value if you have mediation coming up. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.

Some workers have employment contracts that say their employers can only discharge them for “cause” (or similar concept), and any discharge that’s not for cause requires the employers to pay a severance or contractual penalty payment.  When I see contracts like this, it’s often with professional workers like doctors, executives, etc.

It’s common for such employment contracts to define “cause” very broadly, and to give the employer a great deal of discretion to decide what “cause” is or isn’t. For example, such contracts sometimes define “Cause” to include vague concepts like “Violations of any Company policy as determined in the Company’s discretion.”

Then I get inquiries from professionals who are in fact discharged and, unsurprisingly, their employers conveniently claim the discharge was for “Cause” because there was (surprise!) a “policy violation” in the Company’s assessment.  Worse, employers who do this often fail to give details or specifics, relying on vague accusations along with the vague contractual terms.  Using these tactics, the employers then fail to pay the contract’s defined severance- or penalty- payment, or they offer a drastically reduced payment. When a reduced payment is offered, it’s included as part of a severance contract that requires waiver of potential legal claims, i.e. part of the “deal” for the worker is to waive his or her rights to a legal action seeking the full contractual payment.

If you’re in this situation, you should know that you may have options, regardless of how vaguely “cause” or similar termination- or severance- related terms are defined in your employment contract.

For one thing, Wisconsin Courts have found that an employer with such contract-based termination standards is required to have a true and honest reason for termination. The employer cannot make up a false reason or pretext for termination. These issues are discussed in the Wisconsin Court of Appeals case Hale v. Stoughton Hospital Ass’n, Inc., 126 Wis.2d 267, 275-276. So regardless of the contractual discretion such an employer tries to reserve for itself, it is subject to a baseline standard: honesty.

Further, there are often additional legal standards that apply to a job termination, depending on the circumstances. For example, if the true reason for the employer’s discharge decision involves the avoidance of paying a vested benefit– e.g. the worker earned a bonus that the employer avoids paying via the timing of its discharge– then this is legally-prohibited under Wisconsin law as well. Such issues are addressed in the Wisconsin Court of Appeals case Phillips v. US Bank, 781 NW 2d 540.

There are many additional examples of unlawful terminations– such as discriminatory or retaliatory discharges prohibited under numerous Federal and State statutes and regulations– which also depend on the factual circumstances of a job termination.

To make a long story short, if you have been discharged and have an employment contract that reserves a lot of discretion for the employer when it comes to “cause” or severance issues, you should not assume you’re out of luck.  Please consider having your situation reviewed by a competent employee rights attorney. And no, it doesn’t have to be me, although I’d be glad to review the situation at no charge 🙂

If you’ve been presented with a severance agreement, leverage may exist to negotiate better severance terms and payment.  However, most workers who have such potential leverage do not fully realize it or benefit from it. Before determining (and using) leverage, one must first get answers to these five questions.

(1) What are all of your potential legal claims?

It may not be your goal to file or pursue a legal claim. However, the potential for a legal action, and potential values associated with a legal action, are usually the main driving forces that motivate an employer to offer a severance agreement and to negotiate thereafter. The main thing an employer “gets” from a severance agreement is the employee’s waiver of potential or actual legal claims.

So, do you know all the potential legal claims you should examine, to determine if your pre-severance circumstances (e.g. circumstances of discharge) violated any of their standards?

It is very common for employees to research some potential claims, but fail to research many other potential claims they simply do not know about. For example, many workers fired from a job will research certain Federal discrimination laws (e.g. review EEOC website descriptions of Federal Title VII discrimination claims), but fail to review all potential Federal discrimination claims (e.g. fail to review Section 1981 Federal claims not handled by EEOC, etc.), fail to review State-law discrimination claims, and fail to review the hundreds of non-discrimination laws, Federal and State, that prohibit job terminations on various grounds. For example, some workers who have called me about “discrimination” concerns had in actuality (after I reviewed their facts/evidence and many laws) had strong potential claims under particular anti-retaliation or whistleblowing laws, under certain wage or benefit related laws, etc. etc.

To examine all potential legal claims requires examination of a long list of laws, and usually a much longer list than a discharged worker has ever heard of.

(2) What value does for each viable potential claim have if it were won?

It’s one thing to identify a strong potential legal claim. It’s another thing to know what potential value exists if you were to win such a claim.

For example, a worker could have smoking-gun proof of age discrimination, e.g. he may have written or recorded statements from the firing manager, saying the worker was “fired because you are 70 years old.” But if that same worker picked up a job the next day that paid as much as the job he was fired from, the value of a winning ADEA Federal age discrimination claim, for that worker with all the circumstances above (including perfect proof), would be zero.

Yet some other workers, with less-strong (but viable) proof of age discrimination, have potential age discrimination claims with six- or seven- figure values.

You may be thinking “Huh?!” If so, welcome to the world of employment-law damages (money) assessment. Sometimes, the value of a potential legal claim in the legal world defies common sense in the real world. The value of a potential legal claim depends greatly on a particular worker’s circumstances, and one seemingly small circumstance can make a huge difference in whether someone does or does not have a potential claim with significant value.

(3) What realistic range of results is likely for each potential claim, based on real-world chances of success for those claims and real-world behavior of judges and others potentially involved in the processes at hand?

Some types of employment law claims in some legal forums, when statistically-analyzed as a whole, have very low odds of success. Others fare much better statistically. In my experience and observation of certain judges’ decisions, I am aware of a few particular judges who I have sound reason to believe dismiss over 90% of certain discrimination cases that they are asked to make decisions about. No matter how good a potential legal claim or its value may look on paper, the real-world value of that potential claim may be lower or higher based on the particular legal forums, actors and procedures associated with such a claim.  When I assess the value of a potential claim for a potential client, I consider these real-world factors along with the types of laws referenced above involving case merits and damages.

(4) Why should your opposing employer take you seriously if you mention potential employment law rights or litigation but you are not represented by a employment litigation attorney?

Anyone could tell their former employer, as part of a severance negotiation attempt, that they “could” get an attorney or “could” pursue legal action.  Actually taking these actions requires an additional level of commitment, time, and (sometimes, if a non-contingency attorney is retained) expense. Employers hear these “coulds” a lot and most don’t take such talk seriously or let it affect their severance evaluation. If you feel your situation is different than the norm, you should have very concrete ideas as to why; as a default matter, an employer has more legal and financial resources and experience than does an unrepresented worker that the employer fired.

(5) Is the final offer you’re considering a good one, in light of the factors above?

Answers to the questions above are helpful in identifying a realistic range of potential legal claim values, and range of severance values/offers you may make. But whether a final, bottom-line offer is fair and reasonable is a big determination in and of itself.

For example, sometimes (1) I will tell a worker-client– for whom I have negotiated with an employer and received an increased severance offer– that I feel the employer’s final offer is far less than the likely value of a case pursued in litigation; but (2) the worker still wants to accept that offer rather than take the path of litigation and its associated delays, risks, etc. On other occasions, I tell a worker that an employer’s final offer is in my view better than the likely result of litigation, but the worker nonetheless prefers to pursue litigation rather than accept the offer.

Either scenario, I think, is fine. It’s your decision what your bottom-line expectations for a severance should be. However, it is in your best interests that the decision be an informed decision, and that you have answers to the five questions above before making it.

Obviously, it’s in my interest to say that I can help answer the  questions above and that you can contact me (at no charge) to get answers. But more importantly from your standpoint is that you contact some employee rights attorney — whose expertise and out of pocket costs, if any, are acceptable to you– and get the information you need to make informed decisions for your benefit.