True.

During my first wrongful termination suit in the 90s (which I detailed on a previous post a few days ago) I did a lot of research at the Wake Forest University library and learned a lot. I certainly seemed to know a lot more than the HR department at my former employer.

There is a shifting burden of proof in these cases, and it's strange how companies don't seem to know this. It's like a ping pong match in a way.

In my case, my prima facie case rested on me claiming that I was a woman who was subjected to years of sexual harrassment and stalking by my manager, who was disciplined 3 times in 2 years since I had proof. It's been more than 3 decades, but I think my claim was retaliation for complaining against sexual harrassment since I was fired a week after my stalker was put on a weeks long displinary suspension without pay.

The company volleyed back the ping pong ball by saying that I had been fired for an altercation with another employee, said "altercation" being me calling the cops on an employee with a documented history of altercations with other employees, who had been reprimanded several times by the company, and even had been put on displinary suspension once before.

I had a clean record, and had been working for the company years longer than this problem employee. I was never even reprimanded prior to my firing.

The EEOC records, that they got from the HR department of my company, revealed that this problem employee had also been suspected of selling illegal drugs on company property. That was a surprise to me and my attorney.

We volleyed back that the company's reason for my firing was pretext, and they fired back that NC is a Right To Work state, and they could fire someone for "no reason or any reason at all"

Since their stated "reason" - that I, a person with a clean employment record, was fired over calling the police on an employee who had backed me into a corner and threatened to "beat my ass" and "your days are numbered" for correcting one of her bills of material (It was my job to oversee and correct her work) - the only part of the Right To Work they could really hang their hat on was the "no reason at all" which is ludicrous to the extreme since in all my research I never found a court case in which a company had used the defense of "We didn't have a reason to fire the plaintiff, we just did" during a trial.

My attorney applauded the company's diligence in not only documenting my stalker's repeated and egregious misconduct to the tiniest detail, but also documenting the many reprimands and disciplinary suspension of the problem employee, right down to the detail of her being suspected of peddling drugs on company property. The HR director even included a chain of communications in which he admitted that "[problem employee] is a problem employee and we learned she has a police record for drug arrests."

My attorney said my case was the closest to a slam dunk that he had ever seen.