We do often take cases on a contingent fee basis. What this means to you is that you do not pay any attorney fees unless we obtain a monetary judgment. This is our “No Fee Guarantee.”

However, employment cases are difficult and time consuming.  It is difficult to predict with any degree of certainty whether your case will be successful until the case is well underway.

If we are successful, your former employer may appeal.  Even if the appeal is unsuccessful, the appeal delays for years the compensation that both of us expect from a positive jury verdict.

If we lose, either because the judge dismisses the case or because the jury does not agree with our position, my firm will receive no compensation for its efforts.  We as lawyers would not be in practice very long if we did not choose our cases carefully.

Therefore, before we agree to assume the risk of taking your case on contingency, we must be satisfied that (a) there is a good probability of prevailing;  and (b) the amount that we ultimately may recover is sufficient to cover our costs and give us a fair return for the time we spend on a case.

We determine whether your case has a good probability of success by interviewing you, any potential witnesses, examining relevant documents and conducting any necessary legal research.  If we believe there is a good chance for success, we also must be sure that a lawsuit, even if successful, provides enough compensation to satisfy both you and our firm.

To ascertain the potential recovery in your case, we first look at economic damages.  Economic damages are the loss in compensation that you have incurred to date as a result of your termination and what loss of compensation you are likely to suffer in the future.

Loss of compensation to date is easy to compute.  You simply determine what you would have earned to date had you remained employed and subtract anything that you have made in the interim. 

Future lost compensation is more difficult to compute, particularly if you are unemployed at the time that you consult our office.  If you have found another job since your termination, your future lost compensation will be your salary at your old employment less what you are earning presently multiplied over the number of years that there will be such a disparity.  For instance, if you were earning $50,000.00 at your previous employment and now are making $40,000.00 and have five years until retirement, your future damages would be $10,000.00 x 5 years or $50,000.00.

Future lost compensation is difficult to calculate when you have not yet found a job.  That is because you could find a job making more, the same, or less than you made at your last job.  The best we can do in ascertaining your future lost compensation is to make projections based on the labor market and your skills.

It is my experience that unless you can demonstrate a loss of compensation (both past and future) of at least $30,000.00, I cannot recover for you an amount sufficient to satisfy you or cover the costs and expenses of this firm.  For instance, if you were terminated from a job that paid $12.00 per hour, you could probably find another job fairly quickly that pays $12.00 because there are many such jobs available.  In that case we would probably be unable to represent you because the amount of money that we could recover for you would be insufficient to justify a lawsuit.

There are exceptions to this rule, particularly where your ex-employer acted in an outrageous fashion.  This occurs generally in sex harassment or racial discrimination cases.  In limited circumstances the amount you can expect to recover in these cases will make it worthwhile to proceed even in the absence of large economic damages.  This is because the law provides for the recovery of non-economic damages.  Non-economic damages compensate for the pain and suffering occasioned by a wrongful termination.  However, my experience has shown that these types of non-economic damages are recoverable only when there is significant economic damages.  In any event we are careful to ascertain the potential for both economic and non-economic damages in every case.

In the event that we are unwilling to represent you, either because we do not believe that we will be successful or because the damages are insufficient to justify a lawsuit, we will tell you so and suggest appropriate alternatives such as filing a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and/or the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, or filing a small claims action.