Termination

Ten Questions to Ask Before an Employee Termination
June 6, 2025
A termination decision is a risk management event. The answers to the ten questions here should permit an employer to complete a rapid risk assessment of any proposed termination and adjust the decision or revisit the process before making a potentially costly mistake.
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Ontario: ONCA Does not Fully Address Dufault
December 19, 2024
Employment lawyers and observers have been eagerly anticipating the release of the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision.
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Hey Employers – Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
July 23, 2024
The Olympics are coming! And there were two interesting Olympic-related articles in the New York Times involving star competitors who “withdrew” (voluntarily?) from their countries’ teams based on some bad behavior.
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At-Will Employment Is a Fairy Tale…
November 23, 2023
Once upon a time, employees in all states but Montana were presumed to be employed at-will, absent some sort of employment agreement (e.g. individual contract for a term, a collective bargaining agreement, policies that contemplate termination for cause, etc.).
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Firing Employees to Increase Diversity Is Perhaps Not the Best Plan…
January 12, 2023
A recent case provides another example of when trying too hard to fix one problem can create new ones.
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Quiet Firing: What Employers Need to Know Before Engaging in the Trending Form of "Discipline"
October 5, 2022
“Quiet firing” is now a trending term which refers to an employer who, instead of terminating an underperforming employee, simply reduces (or eliminates) the employee’s hours and/or responsibilities until the employee voluntarily quits.
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Extraordinary Workplace Misconduct: The Case of the Somnambulant Sales Rep
August 11, 2022
Should an employee who, while at a convention, knocks on a coworker’s hotel room door, enters, then heads to the coworker’s bed wearing nothing but a robe be fired, even if the employee claims to have been sleepwalking at the time?
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Is the Right to Self-Defense an Exception to Employment-at-Will?
May 4, 2022
In all states but Montana, employment is presumed to be at-will, meaning that either the employer or the employee may terminate the employment relationship at any time, with or without cause or notice.
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Extraordinary Workplace Misconduct: Bah Humbug!
December 7, 2021
In this season of joy and giving, we ran across our next instance in our occasional series of craziness in the workplace. This one involves the embodiment of Scrooge (before he found the Christmas spirit, of course).
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