Practice Areas: Labor & Employment

Wrongful Discharge 

Terminated employees today challenge management decisions from just about every angle. Companies face accusations of race, gender, age, disability and a host of other types of discrimination. Conversations may be interpreted as oral contracts and employee handbooks are often considered binding. To make issues even more complex, wrongful discharge laws vary state by state.

An area this complicated requires the expertise of McGuireWoods. Our Labor and Employment team has deep and diverse experience on every aspect of wrongful discharge, which makes us well equipped to counsel management on:

• Employment handbooks and procedure manuals
• Work rules
• Attendance and leave policies
• Smoking rules
• Drug testing and other procedures to prevent drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace
• Issues concerning AIDS and contagious diseases
• Employee contract and discharge matters
• Litigating wrongful discharge claims
• Employment contracts
• Employment tort claims
• Employment-at-will issues
• Strategies for reducing employment contract and employment tort claims

Our Labor and Employment team is familiar with federal statutes, workers' compensation, unemployment compensation and other state employment laws, including anti-retaliation provisions.

Representative Work

• In 2002, in the Portsmouth Circuit Court, we obtained a defense verdict in an OSHA whistleblower case filed by the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. The terminated employee claimed she was fired because she lodged a safety complaint.
• In 2005, in the Western District of Virginia, we successfully argued to the court, against the plaintiff's motion to remand, that individual managers could not be liable for the tort of wrongful discharge in violation of public policy.
• In 2004, the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond sustained our demurrer on behalf of the former employer, finding that the plaintiff could not establish a wrongful discharge claim based on the Virginia Constitution, as a matter of law.
• In 2005, in the Federal District Court in Arkansas, plaintiff alleged he was terminated in retaliation for complaining about potential environmental issues at the site at which he worked. The Court granted our motion for summary judgment, finding that plaintiff failed to establish he had reported conduct that constituted a violation of federal or state law as required by the narrow public policy exception to the general rule of at-will employment under the state's law.
• In 2003, in the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond, we filed a motion for summary judgment on behalf of plaintiff's former employer. In that suit, plaintiff claims he was forced to retire after he made several health and safety complaints. The employee also asserted claims for both negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress. After we filed the motion for summary judgment and before the Court had a chance to consider it, plaintiff voluntarily dismissed his case, and never refiled.
• In 2004-5, in the Circuit Court of Hendry County, Florida, we successfully negotiated the resolution of a breach of contract and fraud case filed by one of the founders of the company.