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CA Labor Law: Effective Discharge Cases

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California is an at-will employment state, meaning an employee can be terminated at any time, with or without cause. Yet, some employers get surprised when an employee resigns then comes back to sue for wrongful termination. How can an employee resign, then act like he or she was fired? It is called constructive discharge. And in some cases, CA labor law backs up their claims. What is constructive discharge? In the Turner v. Anheuser-Busch decision of 1994, the California Supreme Court states that constructive discharge "occurs when the employer's conduct effectively forces an employee to resign." The decision further defined an objective test to determine if an employee has resigned due to intolerable conditions. The question CA labor law experts strive to answer in constructive discharge cases is whether a reasonable person faced with intolerable employer actions or conditions of employment would have no alternative except to resign. …show more content…

To prove constructive termination under CA labor law, a former employee must prove two things to the court: The work conditions were unusually intolerable and would make a reasonable employee feel compelled to

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