Legal Question in Employment Law in New York

My husband was terminated this past week because a customer he was making a delivery to accused him of "stealing his product". The following is an account of what happened:

My husband is an oil truck driver and the truck he drives has three different compartments (one for gasoline, one for diesel and one for home heating fuel), but only has one hose. So when his next stop requires him to deliver a different product than the previous stop he must "flush the line", which means remove the previous stop's product from the hose/line so he can deliver the new product to the next customer. Practice has always been to either flush the product into the tank of the customer you just made a delivery to (if you are sure there is room in their tank for the product) or to pump the product back into the campartment on the truck. My husband forgot to do it at the first stop so when he got to the second stop he had to flush the line back into the compartment on his truck (the computer system they use for deliveries has the option to do this right on it). The owner of the business came out and saw my husband doing it a accused him of stealing his product (ie. charging him for the product he was pumping back into his truck). He was irate and immediately called management at my husband's company. Later that day company management told my husband that his way of flushing the line was not correct. There is nothing in the emplyee handbook that has any policy or procedure for how this is to be done and they could not explain to him how he should then be doing it. My husband was told his employment was terminated because the customer (who gets daily deliveries from the company) perceived he was stealing and the company did not want to lose this customer's business. I know a lot details are missing, but my question is do you think this situation qulaifies for wrongful termination of employment?


Asked on 2/26/11, 7:08 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Locksley Wade Law Office of Locksley O. Wade

This is a right-to-work State; meaning, your employment can be terminated for any or no reason as long as it is not for an unlawful reason such as, age, sex, disability, nationality, race, or violation of an employment contract (e.g union rules).

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Answered on 3/02/11, 1:06 pm


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