Wrongful Termination Litigation and Your Privacy Rights
Most wrongful termination cases involve claims for emotional distress. A Plaintiff who proves that he/she was harassed, discrimianted or retaliated against is generally entitled to emotional distress damages under FEHA, ADA, and other state and federal laws. However, this also means that the employer-defendant will be allowed in many, if not most, cases subpoena your personal records, concerning your prior and current employment, your medical records, if your case involved disability discrimination allegations, and your psychological/mental/counseling records, if any such records exist, to find out the extent of your emotional distress as documented by your healthcare professionals, to find out whether you have any pre-existing conditions, that started before your termination, and to also learn about whether there were other things in your life that contributed to your emotional distress at the time of your termination.
The potential need to disclose the above information is something you need to think about early on as a potential plaintiff in a wrongful termination case. From my experience, most people don't have a problem disclosing their records. Some of my clients have had abortions, suicide attempts, drug addictions, and other negative information in their records but they didn't mind disclosing it. However, some people would much rather keep this kind of information to themselves. This is of course your personal decision. You should carefully consider early on whether you are ready to be an "open book" and allow the employer to look at your medical and empoyment records, for at least the past 10 years. If there is any information that you wish to keep private and away from the defendant's eyes, you should discuss this with your attorney early on - preferrably during your first meeting.
Although you don't completely waive your privacy rights just because you file a wrongful termination lawsuit and some information can be protected from disclosure by a court order, it's not a good idea to count on that. There is no way to know in advance how a court will rule on a disclosure issue on any given documents, and the disclosure rules are generally pretty liberal, favoring disclosure over privacy - at least in wrongful termination and discrimination cases. However, being aware of such issues early on will allow your attorney to do his own "homework" and figure out how to either protect the potentially damaging records or find other avenues of dealing with this problem, depending upon the kind of claims you are planning to bring.
The potential need to disclose the above information is something you need to think about early on as a potential plaintiff in a wrongful termination case. From my experience, most people don't have a problem disclosing their records. Some of my clients have had abortions, suicide attempts, drug addictions, and other negative information in their records but they didn't mind disclosing it. However, some people would much rather keep this kind of information to themselves. This is of course your personal decision. You should carefully consider early on whether you are ready to be an "open book" and allow the employer to look at your medical and empoyment records, for at least the past 10 years. If there is any information that you wish to keep private and away from the defendant's eyes, you should discuss this with your attorney early on - preferrably during your first meeting.
Although you don't completely waive your privacy rights just because you file a wrongful termination lawsuit and some information can be protected from disclosure by a court order, it's not a good idea to count on that. There is no way to know in advance how a court will rule on a disclosure issue on any given documents, and the disclosure rules are generally pretty liberal, favoring disclosure over privacy - at least in wrongful termination and discrimination cases. However, being aware of such issues early on will allow your attorney to do his own "homework" and figure out how to either protect the potentially damaging records or find other avenues of dealing with this problem, depending upon the kind of claims you are planning to bring.