Take a look at your employment-at-will language right now in your employee handbook or offer letter. (I’ll wait; if you can’t find it, you’ve got larger issues than the one I’m about to discuss).
It probably says something like this:
Your employment with the Company is on an “at-will” basis. This means that you have
Continuing the summer series of "basics" of various employment laws (see prior installments here, here and here), this week the topic is offer letters. Specifically, at the time of hiring an employee, does Connecticut require any documentation be provided to employees?
The answer is yes. Perhaps not in the form of an "offer
Going to a trial with an employment discrimination case is expensive. Which is one reason why many employers will ask the court to dismiss a claim before trial using a process known as "summary judgment".
But a recent federal court case illustrates the difficulty that employers still
have in getting courts to grant summary
An employee who contended that he was fired after complaining about a physically threatening co-worker cannot bring a wrongful discharge claim, in a decision released by the Connecticut District Court. The case, Ferrer v. T.L. Cannon Management Corp. (download here), does suggest, however, a way for employees to bring such claims in the future — with some artful language in the complaint. .jpg)
Readers of this blog will be aware that Connecticut is an at-will employment state, absent some contractual promises or some other exception that may apply. In general terms, that means is that an employee can quit any time for any reason and that an employer can fire the employee at any time for any reason (so long as it’s not an illegal one such as race, gender, etc.)
Two Connecticut Supreme Court cases are required reading for this concept: Sheets v. Teddy’s Frosted Food, Inc. 179 Conn. 471, 427 A.2d 385 (1980), and Parsons v. United Technologies Corp. 243. Conn. 66, 89, 700 A.2d 655 (1997). [Disclosure: I worked on the Parsons matter.]
Those cases created a notable exception to the at will standard:
So, in the Ferrer case, the District Court was asked to extend the Parsons exception to a situation where the employee was allegedly discharged after informing his manager that a co-worker threw a punch at him and missed. The complaint also alleged that the co-worker assaulted another employee about a year earlier.Continue Reading Court Examines The Parameters of the Public Policy Requiring Employers to Provide a Reasonably Safe Workplace
The Connecticut Labor & Public Employees Committee is now scheduled to hold a hearing on various labor bills of relevance and importance to employers in Connecticut. Some are re-hashes of bills raised last year, but others, including amendments to the state’s FMLA laws are new. The hearing is scheduled for February 5, at 2 p.m.
UPDATED 2/10/09
Sometimes, by coincidence, two unrelated decision get released in close proximity to one another that they bring some greater clarity to the law.
Yesterday, I discussed a Connecticut Superior Court ca
se that found that certain discussions did not create an employment contract and that the employee was properly classified as "at-will".
Earlier
Connecticut is an at-will employment state, meaning that employers can terminate an employee’s employment for any reason at any time, with or without cause. Employees are also free to leave their jobs at any times. There are exceptions, of course, to that general rule. But overall, when an employer’s offer letter to an employee
Next time you’re driving on the highway, take a look at the road signs. Not for what they say, but how they say it. Are they new or worn? Easy to read or difficult to see? Straightforward or confusing?
If you drive down I-95 around Fairfield and Westport, you’ll notice something different lately. The signs
The Connecticut Appellate Court today unofficially released a Per Curium decision that affirms the general principle that a contract for an indefinite term is a contract for at-will employment, even in the apparent absence of express terms. 
In Ward v. Distinctive Directories, Inc., (officially released on October 23, 2007), the Court was asked to review
"You’re hired. No wait, you’re fired."
That’s essentially what happened in the case of Petitte v. DSL.net, a decision recently handed down by the Connecticut Appellate Court. The Appeals Court rejected Mr. Petitte’s claims that the company should be estopped from firing him.
The background is fairly straight-forward: