Wrongful termination

**MikMo** · March 6th, 2009, 06:32 AM

Well, I got fired from my job the other day under what I believe to be under very wrongful circumstances. Back in January, a lady from our corporate compliance office called and asked to speak to our manager. I told her she was out of the office. She asked for her cell phone #, I gave it to her, she told me in the meantime, she needed me to box up X amount of patient charts and overnight them to her at the corporate office in Florida. She said this was a confidential matter, not to discuss it with anyone in the office. Next week, it comes out that the charts had been sent to Florida and I catch hell for it. Come to find out, our respiratory therapist had been under investigation for forging blank delivery tickets for visits to patients houses so she could jack up her mileage reimbursements each month. Her and our manager are big buddies, and I'm thinking the problem was that the manager was upset that I sent out the charts before she could get ahold of them to cover up what the RT had done. This happened a couple of days before the Super Bowl, around January 29th. Well, that next Monday, February 2nd, we came in to work and hadn't even had a chance to get the seat warm when the RT blew up. She accused 3 of us in the office of faxing copies of her tickets to the compliance office to get her in trouble. Her last statement was "If I go down, I'm taking you all with me." Two days later, I'm put on final 30 day notice. Reason? Not living up to company standards of CSR. Now mind you, I had not had any complaints before then, no action plans, verbal warnings or anything concerning my performance until after our RT's tirade. The manager said the main gist of the notice was held sales (unbilled equipment in the field), which at the time was around 29,000. Well, she gave me that 30 days to get it down to 15%, which was roughly 12,000. Just for comparison, other centers in our area have 2 CSR's, and their held sales is roughly the same, so I'm basically doing the job of 2 people....that was never taken into account. Well, in February, I busted my hump and got held sales down to 15,000 at the end of February. Here's the catch(s): it was on our manager to get documents from doctors that would have released the held sales at our billing office. As of March 2nd, there were 4,000-6,000 that was her responsibility...things that I'd printed out as early as Feb. 9th that hadn't been returned by her yet. Also, we were to have coaching sessions during the 30 day period to go over my progress, she only had one...emailed me scheduling another one, but didn't have it. When she gave me the termination notice on the 4th, I brought up these points, but her response was "Well, you've been at the job near a year and it takes an action plan to get you to come up to company standards." Her saying that leads me to believe that no matter what I'd done in the 30 days, I'd been gone.

Would you think I have a case from a legal standpoint? Any opinion would be appreciated.

**simple man** · March 6th, 2009, 08:37 AM

If Kentucky is a "right to work" state, like Va- you are screwed. Unless you have a contract.

**Counts** · March 6th, 2009, 09:12 AM

Originally Posted by simple man

If Kentucky is a "right to work" state, like Va- you are screwed. Unless you have a contract.

You are right they do not need a reason to get rid of you which sucks.

That being said if you still want to work there after this (not sure that I would) You might bring all this up to your corpret HR and get your corporate compliance office to back up your story it may not change anything but you never know plus if you raise enough of a stink they may offer you severance to leave them along

**steer** · March 6th, 2009, 09:44 AM

although in Virginia, they do NOT need a reason to fire you... you can still press legal charges for wrongful termination.

Yes, you do have a case. I would go speak to an attorney, and get their view point on it.
But I'm pretty sure you could win your job back, or end up having the manager fired by corporte.

**imported_elp6n** · March 6th, 2009, 11:11 AM

The only way you'd have a case is if you can prove that the reason they gave for the firing was false. In a right-to-work state that, and discrimination, are about the only ways to get a wrongful termination suit in your favor.

It's possible. You may wish to consult an attorney that specializes.