Wrongful Termination Plaintiffs Permitted to Testify as Their Own Experts
How would you like to be the employer in this case?
Two police officers at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) refused to arrest a patient, saying there was no probable cause and the arrest would therefore be illegal. They were shown the door, and now are suing for wrongful termination.
Firing an employee for refusing to break the law is a violation of public policy, and therefore is a wrongful termination. Thus, this entire case will come down to whether it would have been unlawful for the officers to make the arrest, an issue that might be open to the testimony of an expert witness who can explain the law of probable cause.
So, the time came in the case to designate the expert witnesses, and the plaintiffs designated themselves! Counsel for UTMB screamed, claiming that the judge was the best person to decide the issue of probable cause. Besides, counsel argued, the officers had not provided resumes or articles published in legal journals to show their expertise.
Silly counsel, resumes are for . . . well that doesn't really work. But the standard for an expert is not nearly as high as what you argued. There is no requirement that a person be published or have a curriculum vitae in order to be an expert. He need only show that the has sufficient knowledge of a subject to be able to offer an opinion that would be helpful to the jurors. Seems to me that police officers with training and years of experience would be able to provide meaningful testimony as to what constitutes probable cause.
The judge denied the request to exclude the expert testimony of the officers. A more detailed article about the case can be found here.
This is the flip side of the coin I wrote about in Don't Bet Your Job on Whether You're Right. In that case, a City employee decided that depositing a certain check would be illegal, and refused to do so on that basis. She lost her wrongful termination case, because the judge decided it would not have been illegal to deposit the check.
Video Shows A New Way Terminations May Haunt Employers
"Pregnancy Discrimination" -- one of my firm's practice areas -- popped up in my Google Alerts, and the link took me the the YouTube video below. The video is of a visibly pregnant woman, complaining about how she suffered job discrimination at work due to her pregnancy. People using YouTube videos to vent is nothing new, relatively speaking, but I found this video interesting for a couple of reasons.
First was the fact that it came up so readily in a search. A Google search for "pregnancy discrimination" yields 1,520,000 hits. The video was posted on January 9, 2012, and five days later I was seeing it in my Google Alerts. Thus, employers need to know that even a modest effort as in the case of this video could quickly put a business in a negative light.
The second point of note is how persuasive it is because of the calm manner it was presented. The woman, who identifies herself only as "Angel", is not screaming or making outrageous claims; she just sets forth the facts like she is making a closing argument at trial.
In this case, the employer will probably receive little if any backlash. The audio is pretty poor (Angel, the most important part of a video is the AUDIO!), it has fewer than 100 hits at the time I am writing this, and I don't believe she ever identifies the employer, only her union. Nonetheless, the video offers a valuable lesson.
An employer always ran the risk that a termination would result in a lawsuit, but could minimize the chances of a successful suit by making certain all laws were followed AND that the termination did not have the appearance of impropriety. That second element is now especially important, because even if the employer can prevail in civil court, it might still be found guilty in the court of public opinion, with a concomitant impact on the bottom line.
