How Much Is My Employment / Wrongful Termination Case Worth?
This is one question that all the claimants in employment and wrongful termination cases want to know and the one that almost never has a clear answer for several reasons:
First, almost no employment case is a sure victory for the claimant. In fact, in vast majority of discrimination and wrongful termination cases, the issue is the motive - the "why". Was the employee terminated because of his race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, complaining about harassment or was he terminated due to his performance, insubordinate, excessive tardiness or absenteesm, etc? Proving your case is almost always a battle against many supposedly valid reasons that the employer had for terminating you. This is why statistically, nearly 75% of cases that don't settle before trial and actually go trial result in defense verdicts, where the aggrieved employee gets nothing. This is also why participating in mediation is often such a good idea in order to forgo the risk of losing at trial and resolve your case with some compromise sooner than later. Mediation is, of course, not always effective, and it does little good in cases where the parties fundamentally disagree about the value of the case and are unwilling to be flexible enough to reach some kind of agreement.
Having said that above, generally, the value wrongful termination case is based on several basic components:
* Past Wage Loss - how much did the victim of wrongful termination lose in wages from the date of termination till present, less any employment in the interim and any benefits (such as unemployment benefits, etc...) that offset those losses.
* Future Wage Loss - although this loss is inherently speculative, since there is no way to know when the unemployed claimant will get a job, some value may be attributed to future unemployment as a result of the past termination by the defendant-employer.
* Emotional Distress Loss - this is one of the more difficult elements of loss to assign a $ to, but generally it depends on the egregiousness of the employers conduct (whether it was a mistake or simple negligence or intentional discrimination violation of law), and other aggravating circumstances, such as racist or other kinds of discriminatory slur, violence or threats of violence etc. Plaintiff's length of employment with the defendant-employer also plays a role, as the emotional distress argument that comes from an employee who gave ten, fifteen or more years of his life to the company is generally much more convincing than the same argument that comes from an employee with a short career with the same employer. The emotional distress argument is also likely to have more force when it comes from the older worker, since he is the one who is going to have much harder time moving on from being wrongful terminated and finding a new job than a younger employee, and therefore his termination had a greater impact on his life.
So, what does this mean to you and to your specific case? The "value" of the case in the ideal world is not the same as the settlement value of the case.
Any lawyer that will tell you exactly how much your case is worth is the one that you should not trust, because the answer to this question is inherently unpredictable and to some degree out of your attorney's hands. The settlement value of your case depends on many intangible factors, besides the ones listed above. These include your attorney's reputation and the employer's philosophy on settling v fighting cases such as yours or specifically yours, and answers to many other questions:
Does your employer respect you and deep inside want to compensate you for what happened to you, or do they dislike you so much that they want to do what they can to make an example of you and to show to other employees that they won't fold easily?
Do they have an insurance company that covers all their legal expenses or are they self-insured, using their own money for fighting you in court?
Is the employer a large corporation that everyone hates or is it a public agency which is immune from punitive damages by law, and to whom the jury is likely to be more sympathetic?
Do the employer's attorneys act in the best interest of their client in trying to resolve the case or are they trying to bill as many hours as possible and continue to generate work for themselves and for your attorney to make the process last longer at any cost?
How likely are you to be able to prove your case? - is it 50/50 or 80/20 to your advantage? Is the employer planning to file a motion to dismiss like employers do in the vast majority of cases? If so, how high is the risk that your case will be tossed out before it even goes to trial? Your attorney is of course in a much better position to assess this than you are, and this is one of the reasons that you are represented by counsel - in order to have competent advice about the strengths and weaknesses of your cases and make the best financial decision in light of the factors that affect the value of your case.
These are just some of the questions that affect the value of your case in addition to your attorney's prior experience with winning and losing cases similar to yours and jury verdicts on similar cases in your county or nearby locality.
This is one question that all the claimants in employment and wrongful termination cases want to know and the one that almost never has a clear answer for several reasons:
First, almost no employment case is a sure victory for the claimant. In fact, in vast majority of discrimination and wrongful termination cases, the issue is the motive - the "why". Was the employee terminated because of his race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, complaining about harassment or was he terminated due to his performance, insubordinate, excessive tardiness or absenteesm, etc? Proving your case is almost always a battle against many supposedly valid reasons that the employer had for terminating you. This is why statistically, nearly 75% of cases that don't settle before trial and actually go trial result in defense verdicts, where the aggrieved employee gets nothing. This is also why participating in mediation is often such a good idea in order to forgo the risk of losing at trial and resolve your case with some compromise sooner than later. Mediation is, of course, not always effective, and it does little good in cases where the parties fundamentally disagree about the value of the case and are unwilling to be flexible enough to reach some kind of agreement.
Having said that above, generally, the value wrongful termination case is based on several basic components:
* Past Wage Loss - how much did the victim of wrongful termination lose in wages from the date of termination till present, less any employment in the interim and any benefits (such as unemployment benefits, etc...) that offset those losses.
* Future Wage Loss - although this loss is inherently speculative, since there is no way to know when the unemployed claimant will get a job, some value may be attributed to future unemployment as a result of the past termination by the defendant-employer.
* Emotional Distress Loss - this is one of the more difficult elements of loss to assign a $ to, but generally it depends on the egregiousness of the employers conduct (whether it was a mistake or simple negligence or intentional discrimination violation of law), and other aggravating circumstances, such as racist or other kinds of discriminatory slur, violence or threats of violence etc. Plaintiff's length of employment with the defendant-employer also plays a role, as the emotional distress argument that comes from an employee who gave ten, fifteen or more years of his life to the company is generally much more convincing than the same argument that comes from an employee with a short career with the same employer. The emotional distress argument is also likely to have more force when it comes from the older worker, since he is the one who is going to have much harder time moving on from being wrongful terminated and finding a new job than a younger employee, and therefore his termination had a greater impact on his life.
So, what does this mean to you and to your specific case? The "value" of the case in the ideal world is not the same as the settlement value of the case.
Any lawyer that will tell you exactly how much your case is worth is the one that you should not trust, because the answer to this question is inherently unpredictable and to some degree out of your attorney's hands. The settlement value of your case depends on many intangible factors, besides the ones listed above. These include your attorney's reputation and the employer's philosophy on settling v fighting cases such as yours or specifically yours, and answers to many other questions:
Does your employer respect you and deep inside want to compensate you for what happened to you, or do they dislike you so much that they want to do what they can to make an example of you and to show to other employees that they won't fold easily?
Do they have an insurance company that covers all their legal expenses or are they self-insured, using their own money for fighting you in court?
Is the employer a large corporation that everyone hates or is it a public agency which is immune from punitive damages by law, and to whom the jury is likely to be more sympathetic?
Do the employer's attorneys act in the best interest of their client in trying to resolve the case or are they trying to bill as many hours as possible and continue to generate work for themselves and for your attorney to make the process last longer at any cost?
How likely are you to be able to prove your case? - is it 50/50 or 80/20 to your advantage? Is the employer planning to file a motion to dismiss like employers do in the vast majority of cases? If so, how high is the risk that your case will be tossed out before it even goes to trial? Your attorney is of course in a much better position to assess this than you are, and this is one of the reasons that you are represented by counsel - in order to have competent advice about the strengths and weaknesses of your cases and make the best financial decision in light of the factors that affect the value of your case.
These are just some of the questions that affect the value of your case in addition to your attorney's prior experience with winning and losing cases similar to yours and jury verdicts on similar cases in your county or nearby locality.