Most jobs in West Virginia are “at will,” which means an employer can usually end the relationship for almost any reason, or no reason, without warning. That single fact confuses a lot of people who come to us after losing a job that felt unfair.
A firing only becomes a wrongful termination in the legal sense when the real motive behind it was illegal. That can mean discrimination against a protected class or retaliation for a protected activity. It can also mean a firing that punishes you for refusing to break the law.
We know how disorienting it is to lose a paycheck and a daily routine at the same time. At Hansberry & Wagoner, PLLC, Matthew B. Hansberry is a Morgantown wrongful termination lawyer who has practiced employment law in West Virginia since 2006. Before that, he represented employers at two labor and employment defense firms. That background gives him a practical read on how a company typically documents and defends a termination decision.
Reach out, and we can talk through what happened and whether the facts point toward a real claim.
An employer cannot base a firing, demotion, or other job decision on a protected personal characteristic. The West Virginia Human Rights Act makes it unlawful for an employer with 12 or more employees to discriminate in hiring, pay, or termination based on any of the following:
Federal law, including Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act, offers similar protections once an employer reaches 15 employees.
To build a claim, you generally need to show you belong to one of these protected groups. You also need to show that your membership in that group was the real reason behind the termination, not just a coincidence in timing. Employers rarely admit the true motive outright, so proving it usually comes down to patterns, comparisons to how other employees were treated, and documentation built over time.
Discrimination is not the only path to a wrongful termination claim in West Virginia. In Harless v. First National Bank in Fairmont, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals recognized that an at-will employee can sue if the real reason for the firing violates a clear public policy. That is true even without proving discrimination.
Courts applying this exception have protected workers fired for refusing to commit an illegal act, reporting unsafe conditions, filing a workers’ compensation claim, or serving on a jury. This path exists alongside discrimination claims, and the two theories sometimes overlap in the same termination.
Someone fired shortly after reporting a safety violation, for example, may have both a retaliation argument and a public policy claim worth exploring with a lawyer.
West Virginia gives you two distinct paths after a discriminatory firing, and each comes with its own clock. If you file a charge with the West Virginia Human Rights Commission, you have 365 days from the date your employer told you the termination was final.
If you skip that administrative route and go straight to circuit court instead, West Virginia courts have applied the general two-year deadline for civil claims under W. Va. Code § 55-2-12.
If you miss the deadline for the path you chose, you can lose the right to bring the claim at all.
If you live or work in Morgantown, a circuit court wrongful termination lawsuit would typically be filed with the Circuit Court of Monongalia County. The court is housed at the Monongalia County Justice Center on High Street.
Proving a wrongful termination claim means showing your employer’s stated reason was a cover for an illegal motive. Your attorney can gather evidence such as emails and other correspondence, personnel files and conduct policies, and statements from coworkers or former employees who saw similar treatment.
Mr. Hansberry’s years defending employers at labor and employment defense firms mean he has reviewed these same kinds of personnel files from the other side of the table. As a result, he knows what a company typically keeps and what it leaves out.
The Best Lawyers organization named him Lawyer of the Year in 2023 in both Labor and Employment Litigation and Employment Law for Individuals in the Morgantown region. That distinction goes to only one attorney per category each year.
Building this kind of case takes patience, since documentation often has to be requested and reviewed piece by piece before a clear pattern emerges.
If your claim succeeds, compensation can include the income and benefits you lost, out-of-pocket job search costs, lost health coverage, and damages for emotional distress tied to the firing. The West Virginia Human Rights Act does not cap emotional distress the way some federal claims do. State law does limit punitive damages, but the limit is often higher than the federal cap.
An attorney can walk through which categories of loss apply to your specific situation and how West Virginia law treats each one.
Constructive discharge happens when working conditions become so intolerable that a reasonable person would feel forced to resign. West Virginia law can treat a resignation of this kind as equivalent to a firing if the employer created those conditions for an illegal reason.
Not for most at-will jobs. An employer generally is not required to give a reason. The absence of a stated reason does not excuse an illegal one if the real motive involved discrimination or retaliation.
Not always. An employer can fire someone for a harsh, unreasonable, or even mistaken reason and still stay within the law. West Virginia’s at-will rule only gives way when the firing violates specific legal protections.
Yes, finding new work does not erase a wrongful termination claim, though it can affect how damages for lost income are calculated going forward.
A termination that felt sudden or unjustified may or may not meet the legal standard for a wrongful termination claim. The deadlines involved do not move, so the time you have left shrinks the longer you wait. The team at Hansberry & Wagoner, PLLC can review what happened, explain which legal theories might apply, and lay out a realistic path forward.
Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation with a Morgantown wrongful termination lawyer.
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