Getting fired feels wrong. That doesn’t always mean it was legally wrongful.

Michigan is an at-will employment state. That means your employer can legally fire you for a bad reason, no reason, or a reason based on a misunderstanding of the facts — as long as the reason itself isn’t illegal under federal or state law. Some reasons are illegal. Most aren’t.

My job is to tell you which side of that line your termination falls on, and — if it falls on the illegal side — to build the case that gets you compensated.

This page walks through:

The three things I look for when deciding whether to take a wrongful termination case
The four main categories of legally wrongful termination
How discrimination, harassment, and retaliation actually work under the law
How much a wrongful termination case is worth

If you read this and think your situation fits, call 814-821-1140 or schedule a free case evaluation →.

The three things I look for

Before I take a wrongful termination case, I need three things to be true.

1. You’ve been terminated.

Not still employed. Not quit. Not resigned on your own terms. If you’re still on the job and thinking about what to do, the legal framework is very different, and I’m usually not the right lawyer for that stage.

There’s one wrinkle: constructive discharge. If your working conditions became so intolerable that a reasonable person would have felt forced to quit, the law may treat your resignation as a termination. That’s fact-intensive, and we can talk through it in a consultation.

2. Your termination is connected to a protected category or a protected activity.

A protected category is a personal characteristic the law says you can’t be fired for: race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age (40 and older), disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act and Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act are the main laws. The ADEA covers age. The ADA covers disability. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act covers pregnancy.

A protected activity is something the law says you can do without retaliation: filing a written complaint about discrimination, reporting harassment to HR, requesting FMLA leave, requesting a reasonable accommodation under the ADA, blowing the whistle on illegal conduct, filing a workers’ comp claim, or cooperating with a government investigation.

If your termination isn’t connected to one of these, it’s probably lawful — even if it feels unfair.

3. You have evidence.

Documents. Emails. Text messages. Witnesses. A timeline that shows what happened and when. Not a belief. Not a hunch.

The sweet spot — the cases that win — are ones where a written complaint, FMLA request, or accommodation request was followed by termination within about two months. That tight timeline is powerful evidence of causation, and it’s the fact pattern I see most often in winning cases.

The four main categories of wrongful termination

Under Michigan and federal law, a termination may be wrongful when:

You were terminated because of your protected category. (Discrimination)
You were terminated in retaliation for a protected activity. (Retaliation)
You were terminated because you were a whistleblower — someone who reported illegal activity by your employer. (Whistleblower retaliation — often treated as its own category under the Michigan Whistleblowers’ Protection Act and various federal laws.)
You were terminated for refusing to do something illegal that your employer asked you to do. (Public policy termination)

If you think you fit into any of these, I want to hear about it.

Discrimination: the three most important things to know

First, proving discrimination cases is an uphill battle. Few employers are openly racist, sexist, ageist, or ableist anymore. That means the vast majority of discrimination cases have to be proven circumstantially — by assembling enough evidence that a jury, looking at everything together, concludes the employer fired you because of your protected category. This makes discrimination cases labor-intensive, which is one reason I’m selective about the ones I take.

Second, patterns are crucial. To win, I need to discover and develop as many instances as possible of differential treatment — situations where employees in the protected category (for example, women or Black employees) were treated differently than employees outside the category (men or white employees). If we can’t build that pattern, the case often gets dismissed at summary judgment before it ever reaches a jury.

Third, the position of the discriminator matters. Only supervisors can terminate employees. Coworkers can’t. If a coworker — and only a coworker — discriminated against you, you may have a harassment case (see below), but you probably don’t have a discrimination case. The law separates these two claims, and the evidence requirements are different.

Each of the protected categories has its own dedicated page: FMLA Retaliation → · Pregnancy → · ADA/Disability → · Race → · Gender → · Age →

Harassment (hostile work environment): the four most important things

First, the harassment must be tied to a protected category. A generally bad boss — one who yells at everyone, bullies everyone, treats everyone poorly — is not legally actionable, even if the conduct is awful. Most companies have internal anti-hostility policies that go beyond the law, but violating a company policy isn’t the same as violating the law. The hostility has to be because of race, sex, age, disability, religion, national origin, or another protected characteristic.

Second, the harassment has to be severe or pervasive. A single severe incident — inappropriate touching, a racial slur, a physical threat — can be enough. Less severe conduct can be actionable if it happens often enough over a short enough period. Single incidents that aren’t severe, or occasional low-grade conduct spread over years, generally won’t support a claim.

Third, you sue your employer, not the individual who harassed you. Federal employment discrimination laws generally don’t allow personal liability for individual coworkers or supervisors. Plus, the individual usually can’t pay a judgment anyway. The claim runs against the company.

Fourth, your employer has to know about it. For coworker harassment, the law requires that you put the employer on notice — preferably in writing — so they have a chance to remedy it. If they don’t remedy it after being told, that’s when they become liable. For supervisor harassment, the rules are slightly different, but documenting to HR is still the best practice because it creates the evidentiary record we’ll need at trial.

Retaliation: the three most important things

First, opposing unlawful activity is a protected activity. If you push back against discrimination, harassment, or other conduct that violates the law — even informally — you’re protected from being fired because of that opposition.

Second, reporting or participating in an investigation is a protected activity. If you file a complaint, talk to HR, file an EEOC charge, or participate in an investigation of unlawful activity, you’re protected.

Third, the timeline between the protected activity and the adverse employment action is everything. Employers rarely admit they fired someone for complaining. We prove retaliation circumstantially, and the shorter the gap between the complaint and the termination, the stronger the inference of causation. A one-week gap is extremely compelling. A one-year gap is very hard to win with.

This is why I say the “sweet spot” fact pattern is a termination that came within about two months of a written complaint, FMLA request, or accommodation request. That pattern is both legally strong and factually common — and it’s where most of my winning cases sit.

Retaliation claims often travel with specific statutes: FMLA retaliation →, ADA accommodation retaliation →, and whistleblower retaliation → each have their own page.

How much is a wrongful termination case worth?

The honest answer is: it’s part math, part art.

The math: lost wages

There are two categories of lost wages you can recover.

Back pay is the income you lost from the date of termination through the end of trial.

Front pay is the income you’ll lose after the trial ends.

Example: You earned $50,000 a year. Terminated July 1, 2024, trial ends July 1, 2026. Back pay = $100,000. Plus one year of front pay = $150,000 total.

There’s a catch: you have a duty to mitigate. The law requires you to look for and accept comparable work.

The art: compensatory damages

The second category — compensatory damages — is what most people call “pain and suffering.” Emotional pain, mental anguish, humiliation, injury to reputation, loss of self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and more.

Different juries assign different values. This is where trial experience matters — part of why the 50+ trials matters.

Trial value vs. settlement value

If you tried the same case to a hundred different juries, you’d get a hundred different verdicts. The average is the trial value. Settlement value ≈ trial value × likelihood of winning.

Which kind of case is yours?

If your situation is about a non-compete, see Non-Compete Defense →.

Ready to talk?

A free case evaluation takes 15–30 minutes by phone or video.

Schedule a Free Case Evaluation → /contact/

Or call 814-821-1140 directly.

Astbury Law, PLLC · Detroit, Michigan · Representing Michigan employees only.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. The information on this page is for general educational purposes and is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page or submitting a form.