Posted on April 30th, 2019
Below is a full description of this video.
How’s it going, fellow entrepreneurs? John Fagerholm, again, coming to you from Metal Law Group.
Today I want to talk about an email that I got, I don’t know, I think it was last night or maybe the day before. I only got to it last night. Anyway, a potential client emailed me telling me about a problem that he’s having with a former employee and then he was asking me if he could counter sue the employee that sued him.
The employee sued him for what he’s saying are labor violations, overtime, missed meal breaks, missed 10-minute breaks. But then the employer told me that the employee when he left, had embezzled a bunch of money.
It was roughly about … basically, wrote a bunch of checks to himself.
The simple answer to that is, yes, you can counter sue an employee but you have to be very careful because it has to be … for example, you can’t counter sue them being a bad employee.
For example, if they just didn’t do their job well and you paid them for it you can’t say, “Hey, I waste my money so” or, “They didn’t do what I paid them for so I’m gonna sue them.” That you can’t do.
But, if they’ve done something criminal, for example, like embezzlement, in this particular case, first of all you should be reporting it to the police.
But second, yes, you can counter sue for the damages which is the dollar amount that they stole.
Now, how does that benefit you if you can counter sue?
Well, it gives you at least a little bit of leverage because if you’re just being sued and the California laws are pretty much against you, then you have to something to negotiate with.
That negotiation could potentially be the damages that you have from the wrongdoing from the employee.
But let me warn you, just to sue on a claim that you don’t have, that’s a bad move because that’s just gonna create a bunch of problems down the road that is gonna end up costing you more and potentially could put you in even more civil liability.
In closing, yes, you can sue an employee.
You can sue or counter sue an employee, however, make sure that it’s a legitimate lawsuit.
Thanks every body. Until next time.
