Wrongful termination.

Who leads this work — Arthur Karadzhyan: employment litigation from both sides of the table — plaintiff-side wage-and-hour class actions and defense practice at a national employment firm. That vantage is the method: knowing how the other side reads a file before they read it.

“At will” is where the analysis starts, not where it ends. A termination is unlawful when the real reason is one the law forbids — and the real reason is a question of evidence, which is our trade.

1 · What the law says

California employment is at-will by default: either side may end it, at any time, without cause.[Lab. Code §2922] The default yields three ways. Statutes forbid terminations for protected reasons — a characteristic FEHA covers, a complaint the law protects, a leave the law guarantees. The common law forbids terminations that violate fundamental public policy — the Tameny tort, settled into four categories: firing you for refusing to break the law, for performing a legal duty, for exercising a legal right, or for reporting a violation. And contract can displace the default — expressly, or through the implied agreements Foley recognized, though we will tell you candidly that after Guz, implied-contract claims against a signed at-will acknowledgment are uphill.

Remedies track the theory: lost pay backward and forward, emotional distress, punitive damages where a managing agent acted with malice or conscious disregard, and — critically — attorney’s fees under the statutes that shift them. If working conditions forced a resignation, Turner’s constructive-discharge doctrine can treat the resignation as a firing; the bar is high and the timing is everything.

2 · How these cases actually unfold

They begin with the stated reason. Every termination has one — spoken in the meeting, written in the letter, or conspicuously absent — and the case is the audit of that reason against the record. We reconstruct the ninety days before the decision: what changed, who decided, what the file said before and after. The personnel file and pay records come first, by statutory request. Then the choice of posture — demand or complaint — and into discovery, where these cases are won: decision-maker depositions, comparator evidence, the documents behind the documents.

A defense motion for summary judgment is an important possibility to prepare for from the outset. The record should be developed with the likely motion in mind. A case may resolve through negotiation, motion practice, or trial; the course and outcome depend on the evidence, the law, and the parties’ decisions.

3 · Issues to examine

The fee-shifting architecture. A Tameny claim carries no attorney’s fees; FEHA and most Labor Code claims do. Pleading the common-law count alone — a routine error — changes the economics of the whole case. We plead every statutory theory the facts support, and the fee exposure that comes with them is often what moves an employer to the table.

The wage claims riding along. Terminations spawn derivative wage violations: unpaid final wages, unused vacation, waiting-time penalties of up to thirty days’ pay. Small next to the termination claim, but they are near-strict liability, and they anchor settlements.

The layoff that wasn’t. “Position eliminated” is a testable assertion. Repostings under new titles, redistributed duties, the contractor hired in ninety days — reduction-in-force cover stories fail against hiring data, which discovery reaches and firms often never request.

The resignation cases. People pushed out the door rarely get a termination letter. Constructive-discharge claims are viable but unforgiving about sequence — which is why the single best time to call a lawyer is before resigning, not after.

4 · Our approach

We start with the decision, not the grievance: who made it, when it was actually made, and what they knew. We take decision-maker depositions early, while stories are unrehearsed. We draft the summary-judgment opposition before discovery closes, so discovery is aimed rather than accumulated. And we plead for the endgame — fee-shifting counts, punitive-damages foundations, the wage claims — because settlements reflect what the complaint makes possible, not what it merely alleges.

What to bring to a first conversation

The termination letter or email, and anything stating the reason. Your offer letter and handbook acknowledgment. Your last three performance reviews. The names of who decided and who was present. And the timeline, in your own words, of the last six months — what changed, and when.

Selected authorities

Lab. Code §§201–203, 227.3, 2922 · Civ. Code §3294 · Gov. Code §12940(a) · Lab. Code §1102.5 Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (1980) 27 Cal.3d 167 · Foley v. Interactive Data Corp. (1988) 47 Cal.3d 654 · Turner v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1238 · Stevenson v. Superior Court (1997) 16 Cal.4th 880 · Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 317

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