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Gauranteed Job if i moved from NC to FL! FALSE!

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jgarman0

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Florida

My husband and I worked at a bar in North Carolina. There were two owners of the bar, one sold his half to the other to move to Florida to open another one.

They had an agreement in the contract that the owner in Florida can not open a bar is 5 miles of the NC bar he can not solicite or hire any current employees of the NC bar. We understood that we set our notice to Dec. 31st, we had already contacted the owner of the bar in Florida and told him that we would come and work for him (he is not soliciting us, we contacted him!). He told us great we will have a position ready for you when you get down here. We thought well how could this get any better, we'll live at the beach and work.

We left a little earlier then expected, but we did get our shifts covered. It's not like we left them high and dry!

So, we get down to Florida and we work our first night and the owner in FL pulls us into the office and says that we can't work there until he gets this settled. Apparently the owner in NC called and said that he couldn't hire us. He fired us. That was on New Years Eve....Great way to ring in the new year right! Unemployed.

He told us that he was going to wait until after the holidays to see if the other owner (in NC) would send anything from his lawyer. He never did he wasn't going to....because we weren't in breach of the contract we called and talked to the owner in NC. He told us that the contract only states that he cannot employ current employees and that it doesn't carry from state to state. So, he said tell him that he needs to read the contract over again. We told the owner in FL exactly what the owner in NC said and he said that he's not going to deal with any of this. He left NC to not bring him in his life anymore and he's not going to do anything about it. The owner in FL even offered us another job with one of his friends...but it doesn't open for another 2 weeks...we don't have the money to wait that long!

Now what I'm wondering is.... Do we really have a strong case to sue the owner in Florida. He guaranteed us a job and hired us for a night. All he has to do is make a simple phone call to his lawyer and ask one question. But he won't. We did all of the work and talking to all of the lawyers and we showed him all of the facts. And no job! We gave up everything to be here. We had to give away our dog and cat. We have proof that he had a guaranteed job, the apartment complex required us to have a statement from him stating that we were employeed. He did. We have proof that we worked for a night. I am in the computer system and were both on the cameras.

Can we sue for unlawful dismissal?
 


ecmst12

Senior Member
This was NOT an illegal termination. You MIGHT have a case to sue for detrimental reliance but the only way to know that is to speak to a local attorney and show him/her everything you have in writing promising you the job.
 
I find this kind of post and the title of this subforum puzzling. It sure sounds like you got screwed by these owners. However, after so many cases of being screwed in and out of employment I've come to the conclusion that there really is no such thing as "wrongful termination" in this country. I mean every state is "at will" right? At will says you can be hired, fired, or quit for any reason or no reason at all. The ONLY "illegal" thing I've ever seen connected with employment like this is discrimination which is actually a separate issue altogether if you think about it. Also, that's hard to prove. Anyway, just my twenty five cents!
 

ecmst12

Senior Member
49 out of 50 states follow the at will doctorine. That means you can be fired for any reason or no reason as long as no specific laws were broken. The most commonly broken laws are anti-discrimination but there are a few others. But none of that applies to this situation, where the only legal issue is POSSIBLY a breach of contract, but that would require a lawyer's evaluation. And in this case, since the agreement sounds casual and probably verbal, proving such a case seems pretty difficult.
 

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