Wrongful Termination Lawyer in San Diego, CA Firing Reasons and Claim Options

What separates a harsh discharge from an unlawful one

California starts at Labor Code 2922: an employment having no specified term "may be terminated at the will of either party on notice to the other," and a specified term means longer than one month (Labor Code 2922). Fairness is not the test. The test is whether the reason falls inside a category the Legislature or the courts removed from an employer's discretion.

Four families of reason do that work. Discrimination on a protected ground. Punishment for protected reporting or for taking protected leave. Discharge for refusing to break the law. And an enforceable promise, written or implied, that limited the employer's freedom to end the job.

The refusal branch comes from the state Supreme Court's decision in Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co., which held that an employer's authority over a worker "does not include the right to demand that the employee commit a criminal act to further its interests" (Tameny). Someone fired for saying no may therefore sue in tort rather than only for breach of contract. Tort framing is why the case matters: it opened the door to damages a contract theory never reached.

The two clocks that quietly decide the case

Most losses here are calendar losses, not merits losses. California's Civil Rights Department, renamed from the Department of Fair Employment and Housing effective July 1, 2022 under SB 189 (CRD), handles the administrative stage that a state discrimination or retaliation suit has to pass through. Its instruction is blunt: in employment matters an intake form must reach the agency within three years of the date you were last harmed (CRD complaint process). Government Code 12960(e)(5) sets the same three years, and 12960(b) provides that the later verified complaint relates back to the intake form (Gov. Code 12960).

Clock two is shorter and less forgiving. A right-to-sue notice states that the action must be brought within one year from the date of that notice, under Government Code 12965(c)(1)(C). Where the agency has not sued within 150 days, it tells you the notice will issue on request; if nobody asks, it issues when the investigation ends and no later than a year after filing (Gov. Code 12965). Asking for an immediate notice, which many people do to move faster, converts an unhurried three-year window into a hard twelve months.

Where the federal calendar undercuts the state one

Federal claims obey their own arithmetic. The EEOC puts the baseline charge deadline at 180 calendar days, extended to 300 where a state agency enforces a law barring the same discrimination, which California plainly does (EEOC). Once a federal notice of right to sue arrives, suit must follow within 90 days (EEOC). Because the two agencies operate a work-sharing arrangement, and a charge lodged with one is treated as filed with the other, people assume the generous state window protects everything (CRD employment). It does nothing for a Title VII claim that drifted past day 300.

Your first week, ordered so the proof survives

Ask for the personnel file in writing before anything is filed. Labor Code 1198.5 gives an employer 30 calendar days from a written request, extendable to 35 by written agreement, and a former employee one request per year, with a $750 penalty for noncompliance. Subdivision (n) is the trap: the inspection right stops while a lawsuit relating to a personnel matter is pending in the trial court (Labor Code 1198.5). File first and you may have shut your own document window.

Look at the final paycheck next. Discharge means all wages, accrued vacation included, are due immediately; someone who quits with 72 hours' notice is paid at quitting, and without notice within 72 hours (DLSE). Late pay triggers the waiting time penalty of a daily rate for each day unpaid, capped at 30 calendar days including weekends, though a good faith dispute defeats it. The agency's own worked example takes $2,500 a month to a daily rate of $115.38 and a maximum of $3,461.54 (DLSE).

What the employer's side is doing while you decide

Building a file backward. Expect a performance memo dated close to the discharge, a policy produced for the first time, coworker statements gathered by counsel, and an arbitration clause pulled from an onboarding packet nobody reread. None of that is unusual and none of it is fatal. It is why the sequence you write down in week one, with names and dates, carries more weight later than a summary written from memory a year on.

Where a case like this is actually heard

For civil limited and unlimited filings, the court's own rule 1.2.2(E) folds the East and South divisions into Central at 330 West Broadway, Room 225 (San Diego Superior Court). Practical consequence: a Mira Mesa or Hillcrest job and a South Bay job land in the same downtown clerk's office, and the employer pays $435 to make its first appearance there.

How the fee side works under California's rule

In a FEHA action the court may award the prevailing party fees, costs and expert witness fees, while a winning employer recovers only if the case was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless. Labor Code 1102.5(j) similarly lets a court award fees to a successful whistleblower plaintiff. That asymmetry, not a percentage, is what makes this work economically possible for someone with no income.