The legal determination of retaliatory discharge from worker’s comp claims

Let’s look at Texas cases that centered on the connection between worker termination and worker’s compensation claims. Sometimes employers were found guilty of retaliatory discharge. In Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Garza (2004) , the court ruled after evidence showed that the termination was strictly related to a compensation claim. In Haggar Clothing Co. v. Hernandez (2003), a seriously injured employee (who filed a comp claim) was fired after not following the supervisor’s instruction to stay on the job so their unit would not be disqualified from receiving a safety incentive bonus.

However, the evidence must prove a correlation between a comp claim and a termination. In Willis v. Nucor (2008), Williams v. AT & T Inc. (2009) and Nzeda v. Shell Oil Co. (2007), courts ruled that knowledge of a comp claim filing by itself was not evidence of impermissible retaliatory motive.

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