I am inquiring on behalf of my husband who was dismissed from his job last night (New Year's Eve) as an assistant manager at a busy pizza franchise in Atlanta, GA. He was dismissed on the basis of having alcohol on the premises, despite the fact that this company has no written drug/alcohol policy and the GM himself shows up to work extremely intoxicated at times. The secondary charge was that there were “variances in the cash deposits,” but my husband never had a shortage – although every so often there was *more* money deposited than was reported. There were multiple other abuses as well leading up to the dismissal.

Does he have a case? It is my understanding that under Ga law we can't attack from the angle of wrongful termination because his relationship with his employer was an at-will relationship ... but it would be very easy to prove that my husband was not at fault as defined under Ga law. He had no knowledge that the infractions he committed would have led to termination and had no prior warning whatsoever, and he never received an employee handbook, much less a written drug/alcohol policy.

Thank you for your time.

Wrongful termination is a termination that vioates law. There is no violation therefore no case

I can understand this is a frustrating situation. No cause, fault, or any reason need be given to terminate an at-will employee. An at-will employee can be terminated simply because the employer doesn't like the employee anymore, wants to hire new people, or just because they change their minds. Illegal termination is termination on the basis of race, gender, religion or other "protected status." However, employees with a contract that states they can only be fired for "cause" (and sometimes those contracts define what "cause" means), can not be terminated at-will and a legitimate reason must usually be given. Even then, the employer usually has some discretion in determining what is a legitimate reason to terminate and the employee doesn't necessarily have to agree that the reason is legitimate.

If your husband had a written employment contract indicating he was not an at-will employee, you can certainly try to speak to an attorney regarding whether there are any legal options. You can fin done through the locator service on LawInfo's home page at: http://www.lawinfo.com/.