Wrongful Termination
Employers today do not provide the same opportunities as in the
past. The problem is compounded in Georgia which is an “at will”
employment state. This means that an employer can terminate you
for a good, bad or no reason at all.
Georgia employers, however, must still obey federal employment laws and cannot fire you for an illegal reason – race, color, national origin, sex or gender, pregnancy, religion, age (over 40 years), physical or mental disability, military service or obligations, or in retaliation for asserting your rights under various statutes. In other words, an employer cannot fire you if it does so in a manner that discriminates against you on one of those bases.
If you have been fired for reasons that your employer has not terminated other employees who are different from you, of if you have been fired for a reason that is simply false, you may have a claim for employment discrimination. If other employees who are of a different race, gender, religion, etc. have acted in the same way or engaged in the same conduct and were not fired, the employer may be discriminating against you. Or if the accusations against you are untrue and the employer refuses to listen to you, the employer may be acting illegally. Maybe it is a personality conflict with a boss or manager -- but maybe it is discrimination.
Employers today tend to be more sophisticated and engage in progressive discipline, provide written or verbal counseling, bad evaluations, suspensions and other warnings. If you have been fired with no warning and did not know you had done or were doing anything wrong it is possible you have been the victim of discrimination.
When you contact Carothers & Mitchell, we will want to know certain information. We will want to know what type of business your employer did, your particular job, how long you were employed, how you were evaluated, when you were fired, whether you had been previously disciplined, whether your managers had made negative comments about you, your employment history, whether other current or former employees are willing to support you, and what you want from your employer.
Carothers & Mitchell is uniquely qualified to advise and represent you in such situations. We have represented both employers and employees in numerous cases and counseled many more employees who feel they were wrongfully fired.
