What stops your boss from lying to the company: danjoredd? Never heard of this guy. Never worked here and if he did, he would have done a lousy job. Glad I could help!
Every time someone has a casual "Well, you can just sue them" answer to being wronged, they forget that the court system (at least in the US) is inaccessible unless you're rich and richer than your opponent. If my employer does something wrong to me, like wage theft, fraud, harassment, discrimination, it doesn't matter that I can sue them in theory. In practice, it's me and my $5,000 in life savings vs. 100 corporate attorneys working at a $N billion company who will inundate you with paperwork and motions and procedural tricks. Not to mention, if you sue them, they will fire you in retaliation (which is also probably illegal) and may even go so far as informally blacklisting you in your industry. So you're giving up your time, your life savings, likely going into debt, and giving up your future employability, just to pit your one already over-worked attorney vs. their army. Good luck.
That doesn't mean that suing is easy or cheap, but only that things are way more balanced than your comment makes it look like.
Vis a vi the original question,
"I never said that. Do you have a recording?"
Especially when you get the follow up questions, and find out HR left contemporaneous notes in their HRIS tool, which corroborate the story.
Remember that the standard for a civil suit is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but “more likely than not”. I really don’t think you’d need a recording to win that case.
One attorney may be all you need if the evidence is grossly in your favor. No point denying yourself the opportunity, especially if you can afford the consultation fees.
If its a difficult case, then a good lawyer will tell you ahead of time that they don't think they can win and that you probably shouldn't pursue the case. If its borderline, they'll probably accept the case but you gotta pay them.
If its ridiculously easy, they'll take the case for free on their dime / contingency (because they're so confident they're gonna win).
Employees with grievances sue companies all the time, because it works for them.
Companies may have lots of money, but that doesn't mean they want to burn it. They'll often settle even frivolous lawsuits because it is cheaper than litigating.
In a case like this, your lawyer would send their lawyer a letter, their lawyer would tell them they’re going to lose, and you’d negotiate a settlement.
On "slam dunk" cases, some lawyers will work for small retainer and large cut of settlement. You no longer have to spend time chasing. You just supply lawyer with info when requested.
Consider that is exactly what bigCorp wants to you to feel. With that in mind, your feeling of daunt is doing exactly what the bigCorp? So do something for yourself and not in bigCorp's favor, and get over it and do what's right.
Trust me I do what I can where I can!
Small claims, yes. District court and above, not always. Winning the case? Even harder. Trying to a get any lawyer on contingency against deeper pockets is not practical 99% of the time.
Suing a major corp with cause though? They’re going to spend $10,000 just to respond. If you have any basis for your suit whatsoever, they’re going to settle. See: almost every patent lawsuit. A corporation’s in-house counsel is there to avoid getting sued. Once you sue them, they need to get outside counsel involved and the costs mount very, very quickly. It’s just not worth it.
I would talk to a lawyer before assuming this kind of thing. In my experience (having tried), I do not.
> Once you sue them, they need to get outside counsel involved and the costs mount very, very quickly.
The retainers are already paid for or insurance covers that. The sentiments (eg inefficacy of David vs Goliath) are built up over common experiences, not simple misunderstandings of how a case is likely to proceed.
Reputation is important! It can be the difference between one company having complete control over your future, and being able to choose to do what you want.
"Would you hire this person again?" We get a 99% answer rate on that question.
The actual answer HR will give you, the magic words are ‘are they eligible for rehire’.
Another said "all our records are in a storage shed in another state, so we have no records of anybody". This stopped the background check dead. Until I called that employer "but I still have money in the 401k system!" HR_drone says "why yes you certainly do, have them call me back". The results of which also appeared typed into the background check results.
"Trick managers into exposing the company to lawsuits with this one sentence! In-house counsel HATES it!"
In seriousness, answering this question with "no" would quite likely still constitute tortious interference.