Employment lawyers, who are finding inventive ways to skirt at-will laws, describe the shift as a workplace revolution. Some predict it's just a matter of time before almost anyone who is fired could get a day in court. In many cases, fired workers suspected of stealing, being rude to customers or harassing co-workers are suing and often winning. Short-staffed federal judges say wrongful termination cases are the biggest source of new litigation. Including state courts, there were 50,000 cases or more in 1997, estimates Dave Condon, a lawyer and vice president of Edgewater Holdings, one of about 70 insurance companies in the sizzling field of wrongful termination coverage.
Judges still throw out many wrongful termination lawsuits.
But creative lawyers are getting more of them to juries. And jurors are often swayed by appeals to fairness. They are finding for the workers more than half the time. That is forcing more paperwork on employers as they update job descriptions, employee handbooks and performance reviews. They must now thoroughly investigate before firing employees for violations such as taking drugs, and they are buying software to track details such as phone complaints from customers about workers.