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I didn't take any employment law classes in law school, and never practiced in that area, so take it for what it's worth.

The thing that would set my potential liability antenna up is the "just hired" part. I have the vague recollection that there are some cases where courts have awarded damages in situations where someone is offered a job, quits current his job, moves across the country, etc., and then has the offer rescinded or is almost immediately let go. Good faith might well cure any potential problems, but if it were me I wouldn't be 100% confident just because I knew I was in a generally at-will state.

Also, in response to something that came up further down the chain: at issue in a for cause / not for cause firing decision is eligibility for unemployment. When an employee collects unemployment it impacts the rates the employer pays going forward.

Oh, good point, re unemployment.

(Again: I think "for cause" is taking the drama a step too far).

Are you thinking of promissory estoppel? I'm not a lawyer by the way.

There are actually some legal gradients here. You are right that the OP almost certainly employs the BizDev guy as an at-will employee and can hence fire him at any time for no reason at all.

However, if he is fired for cause ("Mr BizDev guy. You are being fired because you sexually harassed Jane Smith.") instead of just fired without a reason ("Mr BizDev guy. Your services are no longer needed here. Thank you for your service.") then that cause can definitely be questioned if proper procedures were not followed.

I'm going to keep prodding. I, too, think the "with cause" thing doesn't add much to the solution to the problem --- if only because it just adds drama. But you can fire someone for cause, be wrong about the cause, and that termination can still be lawful.

Can you be more specific about the recourse the terminated person would have in this situation?

OK first off I will 100% admit that I am not an expert in this area and hence could be wrong (going back to the previously agreed upon advice that "Lawyer up" is clearly the right thing to do).

That having been said, I have received training, by a lawyer, about how to manage situations in which a sexual harassment claim has been made. In that training I was told that the accused employee has a right to hear and respond to the claims. Further if you punish them before giving them that chance you could be opening the company up to liability. Especially if you specifically fire them for harassment.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I believe that with the exception of defamation --- getting back to "be careful about the words 'for cause'" --- it's not true that you legally owe an accused employee process before terminating them. I think what you were told was false, or that you misunderstood it. I don't think that the victims of a false harassment claim are entitled to damages for their termination.

I would welcome expert correction here.

The slight research I've done here suggests that from a legal perspective, it's safer to terminate than not, even if you're concerned about the veracity of the accusation.

I'm going to repeat that we're in firm agreement about not firing "for cause". You don't need cause to fire employees you've competently hired. It is definitely legally risky to provide negative references that include accusations of tortious behavior! Minimize drama, by all means.

I think we're pretty much on the same page here tbh. As I also was told, and believe, that being careful about the words "for cause" is almost always the right thing to do. I think it's pretty much only this series of steps that can get you into trouble:

1) Employee A claims that Employee B harassed them

2) Company doesn't put in any effort to hear Employee B's side of the story

3) Employee B is fired "for cause" for sexual harassment. Generally it's also not just the words here. It also comes with things like "no severance pay even though severance pay was typical for other fired employees."

4) It turns out that the original claim was bogus

In this specific scenario, the company could have problems.

I know we're going on and on here, and I want to say that I generally enjoy your comments and am not just trying to be the picky message board jerk I normally am. However:

It is very unlikely that a competent hiring practice will generate implied contracts for severance pay. Employees are not generally entitled to severance. Awarding severance to one employee probably doesn't create an implied contract with other employees.

I keep coming back to this (elsewhere on the thread, too): the reason legalese employment agreements always tend to look the same is that they are designed to settle all these issues up front. I learned this when I had briefly hoped to create a more humane employment contract and employment handbook at a previous job, only to find out that pretty much only a lawyer can write either of those two things.

I think(?) the only thing at stake in a firing "for cause" is a later claim for defamation --- unless the terminated employee has a special contract which entitles them to things like severance unless terminated for cause.

> Awarding severance to one employee probably doesn't create an implied contract with other employees.

I believe that this is incorrect. If you fire 10 employees in a row and they all get severance but then the 11th doesn't they absolutely can hire a lawyer and ask why and start digging into events that lead up to the firing. If it turns out that they were fired for sexual harassment without being given a chance to refute the claims and then it turns out that the claim might have been bogus the company is going to be in a bad spot. And it's probably going to end up paying out a 5 (or maybe 6) figure check to make the problem go away.

(PS: totally understand that you aren't being a picky message board jerk. No worries at all)

I am very, very interested in seeing documentation or expert opinion to back this up, because it implies that you can easily and accidentally create an implied contract for severance simply by offering one-off severance.

That would imply that there's a legal disincentive to offer one-off severance (for instance, for a no-harm no-foul sorry-to-waste-your-time bad hire).

Unfortunately I have no expert opinion to give here. Merely somewhat educated amateur. Certainly at this point we are well into "go talk to an employment lawyer" territory. They could very well contradict what I have said. If that happens I will stand corrected.

I think we agree on the most important points here.

:thumbsup:

I'm curious about a later lawsuit from the harassed employee. Does firing "for cause" provide documentation that you did indeed address the harassment problem, whereas firing because "at will" could be unrelated?

Your last point is something that I've stumbled across before, and something that it seems many folks (especially engineers) don't fully grasp.

As I understand it, even "getting drunk and trash talking a previous employee" in front of the wrong people can be seen as impacting someone's employ-ability, and can land you in some difficult legal situations if you're high up enough. Essentially the only safe thing to say about past employees is nothing.

> Essentially the only safe thing to say about past employees is nothing.

Yes. Also, even from a non-legal standpoint, such as future interaction with that employee or their contacts, whether that may be social, commercial or legal.

Negative commments can't be unsaid and have a funny way of spreading to unintended parties.

> there is practically no such thing as wrongful termination in the US.

This is true.

However, there is nothing also that stops individuals from filing costly "wrongful termination suits" against a company.

In my little slice of the managerial world, we spend time with HR to fully document performance lapses, ensuring we have written statements clearly indicating expectations and whether they are met, solely because if we were to be sued, we could show enough evidence that this individual was terminated because of a lack of performance, despite being given reasonable time to take corrective measures.

If you believe this, it's not safe to fire anyone --- all of them could "file costly wrongful termination suits".

In fact, "wrongful termination" doesn't mean "terminated unfairly". It means "terminated unlawfully".

In the US, unlawful termination occurs:

* When it contravenes an explicit clause in your employment contract or an implied contract you accidentally created.

* When it has the effect of discriminating against a protected class.

* When it violates the ADA.

Employers in the US generally have no obligation whatsoever to provide "reasonable time to take corrective measures". Things like PIPs have two purposes:

* As an attempt to bulletproof firings that target ostensible members of a protected class

* As a humane / bloodless way of notifying employees that they're about to be fired and should start looking for a new job.

> Employers in the US generally have no [legal] obligation whatsoever to provide "reasonable time to take corrective measures".

They do, however, want to CYA.

> In fact, "wrongful termination" doesn't mean "terminated unfairly". It means "terminated unlawfully".

And "unlawfully" is determined by the US Courts.

> If you believe this, it's not safe to fire anyone --- all of them could "file costly wrongful termination suits".

If by "safe" you mean "safe from litigation" then yes, that is a risk you take when terminating an employee. I'm certainly not advocating against firing people. I am saying that in my experience, I have to work with HR to have sufficient documentation.

Can you point to the law you're concerned might be violated in this scenario?

We're assuming the business dev person is not a protected class (basically your run-of-the-mill white bro).

He could be a veteran, or a minority, or disabled.

No law that I can think of.

Maybe some sort of edge gender discrimination, or perhaps in case this guy is some nymphomaniac and has a documented mental condition. Speculating wildly.

> As an attempt to bulletproof firings that target ostensible members of a protected class

This is phrased poorly -- everyone is a member of (several) protected class, since a protected class is an axis on which discrimination is illegal. Race is a protected class (not just particular races), color is a protected class (not just particular colors, and distinctly from race), religion is a protected class, sex (not just one sex) is a protected class, and so on.

And, in addition to anti-discrimination protected classes, there are all kinds of other prohibited bases for firing (e.g., retaliation for invoking various legally-protected workplace rights such as family/medical leave, etc., or reporting violations of workplace protection, such as wage/hour rules and occupational safety rules.)

PIPs are a tool for documenting reasons for firing to support that they were not for any unlawful reasons would be a more accurate phrasing than saying that they are a means of protecting firings that target "ostensible members of a protected class".

Sure. You're right, this isn't worded well (I wrote it in several successive edits). I'd write it differently now:

PIPs have just two purposes:

1. As a CYA mechanism to avoid discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims.

2. As a socially acceptable means of informing employees that they should begin a new job search.

Many large companies use PIPs as a default for poor performance prior to firing. The frustrating thing about it is that a poor performing worker, who shows up at the office, but does zero work, is likely to bounce around in the PIP system for 12-18 months, collecting a paycheck, before you can terminate them. If they're smart enough to do the bare minimum to satisfy the PIP, they can go back to doing nothing once the PIP is over and repeat this cycle for a few years before they eventually get terminated.

The reason large companies do this for everyone is that over 50% of the population is a protected class (female, minority, veteran, etc), and large companies want to reduce all risk as much as possible, so therefore, you get mandatory PIPs.

Something egregious like this (sexual harassment) definitely warrants an immediate termination. Unfortunately, I've worked on teams with members that did zero work and had an 18 month PIP. It kills morale in unique and incredible ways for the rest of the team.

> Something egregious like this (sexual harassment) definitely warrants an immediate termination.

Why should one incident that occurred outside of work, warrant termination?

Are our private lives subject to the scrutiny of our employer?

Is it sexual harassment if the victim doesn't actually feel harassed?

Yes, if your private life involves making unwelcome and rude sexual advances to other employees, it warrants immediate termination. Employees who do this present a grave risk to the company in terms of legal expense, PR, and recruiting.

Generally, I agree with what your statement. If you sexually harass others in your personal life, and your employer finds out about it, it's prudent to manage them out.

In this case, the employee handled the unwanted advances herself, and later told the OP about it. It's not clear if the female employee felt that it was "rude sexual advance" since to her it was "no big deal."

From the EEOC:

> Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).

It's not about how this employee feels about the advance. It's about how the next one will.

That's a pretty broad assumption your making.

If there is a next employee who is harassed, he/she can file the complaint, and the company can deal with it then. As it stands, no company policy was violated, and the female employee doesn't think this is an issue.

This is a single incident, that again occurred during the weekend, and over Whatsapp (both parties consenting to share numbers).

Yep. You can read more about these things at Ask A Manager (askamanager.com) and a continuous theme is that everyone is scared of wrongful termination, but that's really quite rare in the US. It involves breach of employment contract. (Lots of similar misconceptions about "protected class" as well.)