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Can an employer fire a salaried employee who frivolously sued another employee?

 
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I know there's likely no lawyers here, but I'm witnessing a very awkward situation for a friend.

If one salaried employee sues another salaried employee in a completely reckless, unfounded, and petty matter outside work (literally the definition of a "kangaroo lawsuit" that only her prosecutor dad would represent), can the employer fire her if it causes problems at work? She is relatively new, been there for only 7 months, and is an entry-level employee (straight out of college). The employee who is the defendant has been there for 5 years and is very senior. The employer does not know but my friend is tired of being harassed. He was filibustered in a deposition for several hours with her dad. There really is no case so they are just making him miserable. He is thinking of disclosing it to HR. No there was never a relationship, just a 24-year-old opportunist with a prosecutor father.
 
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Laws can vary from state to state, and country to country. Is there any kind of contract? You'd have to look at the specifics of it. The employer would have to be careful how they handle things, because they can get sued for wrongful termination.
 
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As Fred says, it depends on the laws, but if it is causing problems at work, then it can be seen as failure of loyalty to one's employer and there might be a lawful case for dismissal.

Only the employer's legal department or legal advisers would know.
 
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I'm not a lawyer, but in the US, in general, my understanding is that you can be terminated at any time simply for coming in to work in mismatched socks. The only protections you have are whatever union (if any) is representing you, or if you can prove discrimination (for example, if mismatched socks are a symbol of your religion or race).

Of course, the USA is lawyer-happy, so someone would probably be willing to represent me on a contingency basis, and trust in the fact that one it gets into court, who knows what might happen.
 
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In Texas, you can be fired for anything at all with no recourse unless the termination violates a federal protected class. The self-entitled with litigious daddies are not such a class.
 
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Lawyer-up if you want reliable advice - the results could be very different depending on what jurisdiction applies.

But your friend will need to be careful how they present this to an employer. From the company's perspective it should be none of their business, so they're going to be unhappy that this situation is now creating problems for them. They may be sympathetic to your friend's position. Or they may decide "a plague on all your houses" rather than be seen to take sides in a tiresome non-work-related law-suit.

Either way, your pal needs to get proper legal advice before doing anything rash that might make his situation worse.
 
Tim Holloway
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Come to think of it, locally, the DuckSpeak term for that sort of thing is "creating an hostile work environment" and it can get you out the door at supersonic speeds.
 
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Bear Bibeault wrote:The self-entitled with litigious daddies



This reads like poetry.
 
Campbell Ritchie
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Tim Holloway wrote:. . . "creating an hostile work environment" . . .

It is a very long time since I was a union rep, and I have forgotten most of what I knew. Employment law is much stricter here, but if you create a hostile environment by doing something outside work, the Tribunals would most probably regard that as grounds for fair dismissal. You could also call it adversely affecting the productivity of colleagues.

There is also the option for the employer to suspend somebody.

Only we would use the non‑poetic spelling and write, “a hostile environment.”
 
Tim Holloway
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Campbell Ritchie wrote:
Only we would use the non‑poetic spelling and write, “a hostile environment.”



I blame my auto-correct. The alternative is to consider that my fingers have even less attachment to my brain than I hope they do.

Actually, it's not all that "poetic". I remember back in my early school years when we debated "a historic occasion" versus "an historic occasion" and the idea that the "an" rule for words beginning with vowels also applied to silent "h". And (ahem), that's my lawn you're standing on

What is it with Europeans and the letter "h" anyway? In Italian, about the only time you pronounce it is when it isn't there. In English, you risk getting branded as lower-class, it's silent in Spanish, and - well, French and phonetic spelling have only casual acquaintance at best.
 
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As a Cockney, I ought to be obliged to use the phonetic spelling

An ostile envir'ment

The h is loudly aspirated at the beginning of many words, which all have one thing in common. They are not found under H in the dictionary, but AEIOU.
 
Stephan van Hulst
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Off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance where the sound h is used in Italian. The letter h is used pretty consistently to 'stop' the preceding consonant. For instance: In 'spaghetti', the g is pronounced like 'get', while in 'Genova' it's pronounced like 'jet'. The same applies to 'chi', which is pronounced 'key', while 'ci' is pronounced like 'chief'.

Hmm actually now I see where the confusion comes from. In English, for the consonant 'c', the 'h' is used to modify it exactly the opposite way.
 
chris webster
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Tim Holloway wrote:What is it with Europeans and the letter "h" anyway? ....



Tip: When you Americans use "herbs" in your food, the "H" should be pronounced as in the forename "Herb", not "urb". Just trying to be 'elpful...
 
chris webster
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Stephan van Hulst wrote:Off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance where the sound h is used in Italian. The letter h is used pretty consistently to 'stop' the preceding consonant. For instance: In 'spaghetti', the g is pronounced like 'get', while in 'Genova' it's pronounced like 'jet'. The same applies to 'chi', which is pronounced 'key', while 'ci' is pronounced like 'chief'.

Hmm actually now I see where the confusion comes from. In English, for the consonant 'c', the 'h' is used to modify it exactly the opposite way.


Actually, as Tim says, "h" is a weird one in European languages, right back to Ancient Greek. Phonetically, "h" can be interpreted as a set of voiceless vowel sounds in many languages (e.g. the "h" sound at the start of "hat" is different from the one in "hit"), which might be why historically it has lacked a standard interpretation. And of course many languages drop the "h" sound in different contexts or dialects. "Four candles" sounds like "fork handles" in some varieties of English, as illustrated in the YouTube clip below.

Meanwhile, the symbol "h" is often used in European languages to modify another sound to represent sounds that do not exist in the basic Latin alphabet e.g. German "ich" vs. Dutch "ik", English "th" vs. "t" or "sh" vs. "s", and so on.

All in all, it's quite 'ard to get an 'andle on 'ow to define "h", eh?

 
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Back to the topic ...

I would be more worried about the next job, than getting fired from the current job. Imagine how hard it would be to get a job with a reputation as a troublemaker?


In the US, companies tend to not report that an employee is a troublemaker (to the next company), but it's a small industry, and people talk.

Henry
 
Campbell Ritchie
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chris webster wrote:. . . YouTube clip below. . . .

YouTube? I remember watching that on the TV when it first came out.
 
Campbell Ritchie
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Henry Wong wrote:. . . reputation as a troublemaker? . . .

Agree. A suspension (as I mentioned earlier) would have that effect as well.
 
fred rosenberger
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Henry Wong wrote:In the US, companies tend to not report that an employee is a troublemaker (to the next company), but it's a small industry, and people talk.


I'm not sure, but I think they can't report such things. or rather, they don't because they are afraid of being sued for interfering with someone's livelihood. Many companies will only report start date/ end date, and "are they eligible for rehire".
 
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