Recently in Wrongful Termination Category

Most employers would love a hard-working employee who sacrifices her own needs and works through lunch to get the job done, right? Not quite. In this highly litigious age, an employee working through lunch may create more headaches for a company than any work she can possibly accomplish in a 30-minute period.

Sharon Smiley was fired from her job of ten years at a Chicago real estate company for working through lunch. There was nothing wrong with her termination, but an Illinois court found that the woman was entitled to unemployment benefits.

About 150 employees were laid off by Rolf’s Patisserie in Lincolnwood in December. They were given little to no notice that the company was shutting down. To make matters worse, many of these employees live paycheck-to-paycheck and found out that their final paychecks did not clear either.

These former workers are now seeking to band together in a class to bring a Rolf’s Patisserie lawsuit, reports the Chicago Tribune.

Luis Aguilera, a former teacher in the Chicago public school district, is now suing the district claiming that he was wrongfully fired for exercising his free speech rights.

At the heart of the lawsuit is not something that Aguilera said, so much as something that he wrote, a memoir the former teacher wrote recounting his own relationship with an elementary school teacher when Aguilera was only 13, reports the Chicago Tribune.

Sharon Starzyk was one of several women who sued the Town of Cicero and its President Larry Dominick for sexual harassment. The town finally agreed to pay Starzyk $500,000. However, the $500,000 was not to settle the former city employee’s sexual harassment lawsuit, instead it was to settle her wrongful termination lawsuit.

Starzyk was fired in 2009 just a few months after she filed a sexual harassment claim against Dominick, reports MyFox Chicago. She later agreed to drop the sexual harassment claim, but she continued her wrongful termination suit against the town.

Deputy Fire Chief Loyal Nichols was arrested for driving under the influence in late November. Facing discipline as the deputy district chief, Nichols resigned his position in a strategic effort to receive union protection.

Now in the lower rank of battalion chief, Nichols has the backing of the union against any disciplinary action the Chicago Fire Department may want to take against him, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

Cyber Monday has come and gone. But you may still find yourself online looking for those last-minute holiday deals.

But you should be careful where you shop. If you do your online shopping at work, you could find yourself without a paycheck to pay for your online bargains. That's because bosses are increasingly unhappy with their workforce spending work time -- paid time -- to do things completely unrelated to work … like buying socks for your cousin.

Even if you are an at-will employee, did you know that you cannot be fired for just any reason? So while an employer may fire you for no reason at all, firing for an illegal reason is not allowed.

Be aware that you are protected from illegal terminations including the following top three reasons for wrongful termination:

What would you do if you were told you were no longer in your employer's plans? Would you look for new employment, wait for your employer to officially fire you, or try to find a way to stick with the company? If you were Bears' running back Chester Taylor, you might just storm out, burning bridges behind you.

When Chester Taylor cut rumors spread over the Internet, it was reported that Taylor was told by Coach Lovie Smith that he was no longer in the team's plans, reports the Chicago Tribune. But not so fast ...

Tommy Bennett, a former employee of civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson, claims he was fired from Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition because of sexual orientation as a gay individual. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Bennett filed a complaint about the issue last year with the Commission of Human Relation in Chicago.

Windy City Times reported Bennett, who worked as the coalition's national director of community affairs, claimed he was discriminated against once he was hired. He said membership and volunteer coordinator Caroline Wiggins told Jackson she didn't want to work with him because he is gay, but no "action was taken in response" to his complaints about her.

In a recent religious discrimination suit against Wal-Mart, a federal appeals court ruled in a favor of the company and said its dismissal of Joliet employee Tanisha Matthews was not biased. The Chicago Sun-Times reported Matthews was fired after she told Amy, a lesbian coworker, that God did not accept gays and she would go to hell.

Court documents revealed Matthews, who worked as an overnight stocker at Wal-Mart since 1996, engaged in a conversation about God and homosexuality during one of her break shifts in September 2005. Another employee then told the manager the following day that Matthews had made inappropriate remarks about gays to Amy.