What can I recover?
If you have been terminated for a discriminatory or retaliatory reason, or if you are the victim of employment defamation, the law will permit you to recover your lost wages and benefits. This is known as backpay.
Depending on the facts of your case, you also may be able to recover damages for humiliation and embarrassment, loss of enjoyment of life, mental and emotional pain and suffering, as well as punitive damages.
If you are being harassed on the job, your first goal is usually to make the harassment stop. In addition, if you have suffered lost wages, benefits or any of the types of damage typically sustained in a termination, those damages are recoverable.
Your rights against discrimination and harassment are protected in many instances by both state and federal laws. Typically, the federal laws allow for punitive damages while many state laws do not. However, federal laws also typically impose damage caps.
Most of the laws which prohibit employment discrimination have been passed by either the United States Congress or a state legislative body, therefore, the remedies for such discrimination are spelled out in the statute. Although there are some differences from state to federal law and between states, the common elements of most remedies are similar.
Most laws which prohibit employment discrimination and retaliation divide the damages into four different categories: lost wages, compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorneys fees and expenses. If you haven't suffered damages, your case is probably not worth pursuing. This could be the case, if you were the victim of unlawful discrimination, but quickly found a higher paying, better job and did not seek any treatment for emotional injury.
For additional information on the following topics, please follow the links below:
