When Is an Employee’s Termination Wrongful?

A former trustee of the New Jersey State Bar Association, Gregory K. Mueller is an accomplished lawyer practicing in Tenafly, New Jersey. The president of Mueller Law Group, attorney Gregory K. Mueller heads a legal practice that provides representation to plaintiffs and defendants in a variety of civil litigation matters including wrongful termination.

As an employee, you can take action against an employer who terminates you wrongfully. However, there is a framework within which your case must fall. New Jersey is an at-will state. That means employers can hire and fire employees at any time, without notice or cause. However, contractual agreements can provide job security to employees. If you signed an employment contract with your employer in which you were promised employment for a definite period or that termination would only arise from reasonable cause or with notice, your employer is bound by these terms. If your employer terminates your employment without regard for these contractual terms, that termination is wrongful.

Besides contractual agreements, there are other reasons termination can be deemed wrongful. One is federal prohibition. Federal laws prohibit discriminatory termination of employees. Your employer cannot fire you on the basis of your race, gender, origin, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, or marital status. In addition, your employer cannot fire you as retaliation for reporting or trying to report an illegality, for taking time off work to serve in the military or tend to a civic duty such as sitting on a jury or voting, for exercising your rights under wage and labor laws, or for filing claims for workers’ compensation benefits.

In other instances, courts have held termination wrongful for breach of good faith and fair dealing. For example, courts have ruled that employers who repeatedly transferred employees to remote or dangerous locations or jobs to coerce them to quit, fabricated reasons to fire employees so that they could replace them with others who will work for a lower wage, or fired employees to stop them from collecting sales commissions, breached their duty of good faith and fair dealing.