Employment Litigation Lawyers

If your employer has broken the employment contract that they have with you, then you might have the right to collect damages, which is the legal term for compensation. You can find out more information by contacting employment litigation lawyers, such as the ones available at Eric Siegel Law. The potential to collect compensation is purely because there are going to be financial losses if your contract has been breached and you’ve lost your job, and the types of damages that are available in breach of contract cases are going to be more limited than any damages available in other types of employment cases.

What Is an Employment Contract?

Employment contract is a binding agreement between the employee and the employer about the terms of the employment. Oftentimes, the most straightforward type of contract is a written contract that all parties sign and is legally binding. The contracts can be oral, such as if your employer agrees to certain terms or actions orally, or has implied from the actions and statements of all parties involved. Another implied or considered technically oral contract is the employee handbook.

The terms of your employment contract are going to be up to you and your employer, the employer does have more bargaining power in most cases but the law does please a lot of things off limit such as your employer cannot ask you to give up your right to earn a minimum wage or the right to collect unemployment should you lose your job.

Breach of Contract

If an employment contract is reached or broken, this means that one party is not living up to the bargain agreed upon when the contract is made. Typically, the employee is going to a claim to have been fired or laid off for the term that was agreed to in the contract, or for reasons that is not allowed by the contract or according to federal law. An example of this is if you have a contract stating you cannot be fired for four years, and your boss fires you in two years rather than the four agreed upon, your contract would have been breached. 

At will agreements can specify schedule, compensation and work location, however even if your lawyer does not honor these terms such as paying you less than the contract states you may not have a good breach of contract claims because at will work states are considered being free to fire employees for any reason at will other than federally prohibited reasons.

An at will agreement mean that you can be fired any time, you can quit anytime, however because of this you are unable to have a breach of contract except in rare cases where it is clear that of federally prohibited issue came about and got you fired — such as your gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or more.