Not all cases end in a verdict from a judge. Not all cases go to a jury. Many cases are settled out of court. Regardless of the process or outcome of your claim, a successful outcome will require that you choose the right attorney.
When choosing an attorney, it’s important to make sure you can get a positive answer to the following questions: Do they focus on California labor and employment law? What areas of this law do you specialize in? What is your experience and how does it relate to the claim you are trying to file?
In addition to these questions, you need to make sure that you are choosing a lawyer who can go to trial. Unfortunately, it is common for people to hire an attorney only to discover, or perhaps never discover, that the attorney never tried the case. Make sure your attorney has the required experience to bring the case to its required conclusion, no matter how complicated it may be.
Damages related to a wrongful termination case are often characterized in these categories: emotional damages, economic damages, and fees related to the case.
In relation to the first category, these damages are usually measured in terms of the emotional distress caused by losing your job. What impact did it have on your daily life, on your monthly life? The sleepless nights, the anger, the frustration are all part of your emotional distress, and a claim can get you compensated for it. This includes both past emotional distress and future emotional distress. The impact the termination had on you or will have in the future is called future emotional distress.
Similarly, certain economic damages (such as back wages and advance wages) are something that may be included in a claim. This compensation may include not only amounts lost when changing jobs, but also losses related to certain benefits such as health care or medical insurance, vacations and other benefits that you may have lost after wrongful termination.
Depending on the type of employer and the employer’s actions, it is also possible to include punitive damages charges in a claim. If your claim is successful, it is also possible to file a motion for attorneys’ fees and costs of the claim, which basically means that all expenses of your case must be borne by the employer.