Speaker 1: This video is going to explain a wrongful termination lawsuit from beginning to end, or to put it better, from termination to settlement. Now, I've made videos about wrongful termination before in the past, but they primarily dealt with whether or not you had a case and how much money it was worth. This video, on the other hand, is going to deal with the process of the lawsuit. What do you, the client, actually go through step by step? So, if you want to know if you have what it takes to win a wrongful termination lawsuit, keep watching. There are up to 13 stages to any wrongful termination lawsuit. While I only represent clients in California, because this is where I'm licensed, these stages are very similar from state to state. So, no matter where you live, this video will be highly informative. All right, let's look at number one, the termination. It's important that we discuss your actual termination real quick. Okay, so you just got fired from your job, or you think you're about to get fired. How you handle your actual termination in the meeting is very important, because your behavior at this moment can help you win your case, or it can destroy it. Most people who call us had a sense that something was wrong, even before they were fired. Occasionally, somebody's totally blindsided. In either situation, you can expect to be pretty upset and emotional, but it's very important that you don't do the following things. Don't scream and shout or use any profanity. Don't threaten to sue them. Don't say you'll be contacting a lawyer. But most importantly of all, don't sign a severance agreement until after you've talked to a lawyer. Severance agreements, also known as a separation agreement or a settlement agreement, are a written contract between the company and the terminated employee. The contract says that the company will give you money in exchange for you giving up your right to take legal action against them. Now, I can't tell you how many times people have called our office and had a very good case, but because they took the quick $1,200 or $500 or $15,000, they lost their ability to sue for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Don't be one of these people. Call a lawyer before you sign a severance agreement. My office does severance reviews for a very reasonable fee. I made an entire video about severance reviews. I also made an entire video about how to negotiate your own severance agreement if you can't afford to hire a lawyer. Okay, but what if you quit your job? Can you still sue for wrongful termination? The answer is that it's unlikely, but maybe. When people do this, it's called a constructive termination. Now, I'm not going to get into the details here, but if you want to learn more about constructive terminations, visit my Ultimate Guide to Wrongful Termination Law on my website. I'll link it below. I examine that topic in depth, and that guide is an amazing resource. Now that the termination has occurred, the next step in the case is to hire a lawyer. Now, this is the most important step for you to do right. You absolutely want to find an attorney that you trust and who has the time in his or her schedule to work your case up the right way. The lawyer you're on the phone with might be the best in the world, but if he or she doesn't have enough time to dedicate to your case, you will not get a satisfactory settlement. You will learn pretty quick that lawyers are obsessed with time, and there's good reason for that. Each case is a tremendous amount of work, but your lawyer is going to do 98% of that work, so it pays to get a good one. So what should you expect when contacting a lawyer? Well, the first person that you'll probably speak with won't be the lawyer. This is totally fine and normal. You will probably speak with an intake specialist or paralegal who will ask you a bunch of questions. This person should give you enough time to tell the basics of your story. Now, this isn't the right time to get into every nitty-gritty detail. We don't need or want that at this point. Just tell your basic story and answer the questions that the intake person asks. After this, usually the lawyer will review your case within a day or two, and if it looks like you have a case, the lawyer or the intake person will call you to get more information, and they'll probably set up an in-person meeting. Now, if you decide to hire that lawyer, likely you'll hire him or her on a contingency fee. This means that the lawyer only gets paid if they successfully recover money on your behalf, and they get paid at the end of the case, so you don't have to pay any money out of pocket. On the other hand, if the lawyer believes that you don't have a case or can't prove your case, the intake person will call or email you saying that the law firm cannot represent you at this time. Now, just because one lawyer turns down your case doesn't mean you don't have one. I've taken cases that other lawyers turned down and settled them for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and since I'm an honest guy and we're being honest here, I've also turned down cases before that other lawyers went on to settle for a lot of money. So the moral of the story is that you might have to call several law firms before you find a lawyer to take your case. However, if you've called six lawyers and they've all turned down your case, it might be best not to pursue legal action. Now, we've all heard and know that lawsuits last a long time. Why is that? The reason wrongful termination lawsuits last so long is the rules of civil procedure set up deadlines for everything. You file the case, they have 30 days to respond. You serve discovery, they have a certain amount of time to respond. Your lawyer only has a small amount of control over how fast or slow your case moves. So don't be surprised if your lawyer says, you're probably not going to hear me for a while. It's all normal. But if your lawyer refuses to answer your questions or return your phone calls, that's a problem. After you hire your lawyer, the very first thing that he or she is going to do is work on extensive fact-finding. The facts of your case are incredibly important. Your lawyer needs to know all of them. How I personally handle this is I go through the story verbally with my clients several times and take extensive notes. Then I ask most of my clients to write me a timeline of events. The client sits down and writes me a letter essentially that describes exactly what happened and when it happened. This includes the good facts and the bad facts of the case. In addition to the story, I also gather all relevant documents. This includes emails, text messages, the company handbook, company policies and procedures, social media posts, company articles, video and audio recordings, and anything else that might be relevant to the case, good or bad. Now this early part of the case also reveals what kind of client I have. Do I have a client who will follow my directions or do I have a client who refuses to do any work, is slow to respond to me, doesn't pay attention to detail, or tends to exaggerate? It is at this point in the case where I know if I have a good client or a bad one. And trust me, you want to be a good client. Okay, you've hired a lawyer and the lawyer has gathered most of the facts and documents. Now what? Well, in some cases, lawyers like me send a demand, a pre-litigation demand to the company. At this point, the case has not been filed in court yet, but I'm telling the company that they're gonna get sued, what they're gonna get sued for, and if they want to prevent that from happening, we need to attempt to settle the case. Now as I get wiser in my career, I find myself sending less and less of these pre-litigation demand letters because it only results in a satisfactory settlement in about 10 to 20% of cases. Moreover, I would rather file the lawsuit first to show them that I'm serious, do some discovery, and put some financial pressure on the company that tends to get my client a better result. Getting tired of wearing this thing. Assuming that the case does not settle early on, your lawyer will begin drafting the complaint. This is the legal document that initiates your case in court. You might review this document, but you certainly won't have anything to do with drafting it. Now, if you want to learn more about what's actually in that, what kind of claims you're making in a wrongful termination lawsuit, visit my ultimate guide to wrongful termination law on my website. There's a link below. Now, after the complaint is filed with the court, your lawyer will hire somebody to serve it on the company, meaning deliver it to them. Once the case is filed and served, you, the employee, will be called the plaintiff. The company will be known as the defendant. Now generally, the company has about 30 days to respond to your lawsuit. However, this deadline is frequently extended. After the case is filed, usually the company's lawyers will file a document called a motion to strike or a demur. These are formal requests asking the judge to do something. We lawyers call these early motions. Usually these motions are an early effort by the company to throw out your entire case or a part of your case. You will have virtually nothing to do with this part of the case. It's simply the lawyers bickering over the law. There is usually a court hearing, but you won't want to attend that. Assuming you have a good lawyer and a good case, these motions are usually denied. If they are granted, sometimes your attorney can amend your case to keep it alive, but don't sweat this part of the case. It really has very little to do with you. Early in the case, the lawyers on both sides are going to begin a process called written discovery. Discovery is a fancy lawyer term for each side exchanging information. Basically, the rules of civil procedure have set up mechanisms for the sides suing each other to exchange essential information. This is necessary for our judicial process to work and to assist the parties, the two people suing each other, in facilitating settlement. There are a few types of written discovery. First is requests for production of documents. This is where your lawyer sends a written demand to the other side demanding certain documents. Next are interrogatories. This is where your lawyer sends a written demand to the other side that they need to answer these written questions under oath. Then there's requests for admission. This is where your lawyer sends a written demand that the other side admit or deny certain facts. While this might seem pretty straightforward, take note, discovery goes both ways. The company is going to send these written discovery requests to your lawyer as well and you're gonna have to help your lawyer in answering them. Now this can be an uncomfortable process as they might ask questions or request documents that you frankly don't want them to know. What kinds of things will they want? They'll want anything that is relevant to the lawsuit. This includes emails, text messages, handwritten documents, video recordings, audio recordings, doctor's notes, medical records, social media posts, and a whole lot more. In certain situations, your lawyer can block certain requests to keep those facts or documents out of trial, but that depends on the law and the type of case. The next stage of the case are what is known as depositions. Depositions are usually a one-day event. You meet with your lawyer and you go to the opposing lawyer's office. You sit down in a conference room with your attorney and the opposing lawyer and a court reporter. The court reporter is somebody who simply writes down everything the witness and that the attorneys say. Your lawyer will depose several witnesses. This includes the person who decided to terminate you, people who can talk about your job performance, human resources, and anybody else who has information relevant to your case. But just like written discovery, the opposing lawyer gets to depose you as well. Now, aside from trial, depositions are the scariest part of your case. You're getting questioned by the opposing lawyer, but this doesn't need to be scary and you'll see why in just a second. The opposing attorney is going to ask you a bunch of questions during your deposition and you have to answer them. If the lawyer asks you an inappropriate question, your lawyer will defend you and might even tell you not to answer the question. This is totally normal. But the easy thing about all this is all you gotta do is tell the truth. All you have to do is answer the questions honestly. So if you've been honest with your lawyer up to this point, it should be pretty easy. Remember the old saying that the truth will set you free? Yeah, it's really true. In about 50% of wrongful termination cases, the defense lawyers file a big motion that's called summary judgment. You won't have much to do with this except for read some documents, answer your lawyer's questions, and probably sign some paperwork. But it is a tremendous amount of work for your lawyer to properly oppose summary judgment. So if you know your lawyer is working on this motion, return his or her calls ASAP. Hey, real quick interruption. If you find this video helpful and useful, can you please give it a thumbs up down below? That tells YouTube that what I'm doing is valuable to people and frankly, it encourages me to make more of these videos. All right, let's get back to it. Settlement of your case can occur at any time, but usually settlement occurs after depositions are done. In today's litigation environment, most wrongful termination cases settle at a thing called mediation. Mediation is usually a one-day event. A mediator is hired for the day and you and your lawyer go to a legal office and sit in a conference room. The company and their lawyers go to the same office but sit in a different conference room. The mediator who is usually a retired judge or somebody with a lot of experience settling cases goes back and forth between the two rooms throughout the day. He or she discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the case, argues with the attorneys and is the person who kind of ferries the monetary offers back and forth. Now mediators get paid good money to help aid settlement discussions. Mediation is a confidential process and you may discuss things with that mediator that will never come out in court. Moreover, some mediators actually make a mediator's proposal at the end of the mediation, which is simply a dollar number they think the two parties may accept. If both parties accept that mediator's proposal, the case settles. If one doesn't, the case continues. Okay, if the case settles, how much is it going to settle for? Well, it just so happens that I've made an entire video about the monetary value of wrongful termination cases. So if you want to know how lawyers like me value cases or what your case might settle for, go watch that video because it will answer a lot of your questions. You can also view it on my Ultimate Guide to Wrongful Termination Law webpage, which again, I'll leave a link below this video. Now, if your case does settle, you and the company will sign a settlement agreement. This contract says that the company is paying you a certain amount of money in exchange for you dismissing the lawsuit. It will contain confidentiality clauses and a bunch of other legal mumbo jumbo that your attorney will explain to you. If your case gets within a few months of the trial date, then your attorneys are going to start frantically working up your case for trial. While not every case goes to trial, every case needs to be prepared as if it's going to trial. Your lawyers will be organizing documents, preparing transcripts, organizing witnesses, fighting with the other side over what to exclude from trial, meeting with the judge to learn about his or her courtroom rules, and more. Make sure you return your attorney's phone calls promptly during trial preparation. Your attorney might even bring you into his office to prepare you for your examination. The two of you might do a mock or like a mini mock trial so that you get used to the question and answer format. Finally, even though everyone has done all the preparation, more often than not, cases settle right before trial. So just because your attorney is preparing frantically and telling you to keep your calendar open doesn't mean the case won't settle last minute. Now it's time for trial. This is it. Your day in court has arrived. Actually, wrongful termination trials usually last between one to three weeks. Now the trial first starts with jury selection. Your attorneys get to question the jury pool to find out if anybody has any prejudicial biases. If so, your attorneys will remove them and they can remove a certain number. After jury selection, both sides do opening statements where the attorneys explain to the jury what the evidence is going to show. Then your attorney puts on your case. He or she will call you as a witness and you will take the stand, answer questions, and you'll be cross-examined by the defense lawyer. Generally, this is where you get to tell your story to the people who are deciding your fate. Your attorney will also call other witnesses, good and bad, to help prove your case. When your attorney is finished, the company gets to put on their case. This usually lasts much shorter than your case. After that, both sides deliver what's called closing arguments where the attorneys argue their case to the jury. This usually lasts only an afternoon. Then after instructions from the judge, the jury retires to go and decide your fate. Once they come to a decision, everyone comes back to court and they read the verdict. If you win, it's time to celebrate. If you lose, it's time to cry. Last but not least, the appeal. If either side believes that there was a serious error made by the other side or the judge during the trial, they can file an appeal. This appeal extends the case time dramatically, usually by a year or so, but it also can correct things that were unfair at trial. And that is a wrongful termination lawsuit in a nutshell. Now you know what to expect. Now you know what you might be getting yourself into if you have a case. Now, if you are in California and you need a wrongful termination lawyer, don't be afraid to contact me. I'll leave my contact information somewhere on the screen. But if you're outside of California, you can Google to find a good lawyer. You can ask your friends to find a good lawyer. There's a lot of different ways to find a lawyer. Just make sure you trust that person and you know that they've got enough time in their schedule to properly litigate your case. All right, take care.