Michigan: Employer Establishes Workers Was Fired for Gossiping, Not Because Workers’ Compensation Claim Was Filed

In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals of Michigan affirmed a trial court’s order granting summary judgment to plaintiff’s former employer on plaintiff’s claims of retaliatory employment discrimination—including workers’ compensation discrimination—where the former employer offered a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for terminating her employment (that the plaintiff violated the employer’s respectful workplace policy by spreading gossip after the employer gave the plaintiff a final warning about such behavior). The appellate court held the trial court had not erred in holding plaintiff had failed to establish that the employer treated similarly situated employees differently. Moreover, plaintiff’s contention that her workers’ compensation claim was temporally connected to her termination was found not to be persuasive. Something more than a temporal connection was required, since the employer proferred a nondiscriminatory reason for the firing.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Jones v. Musashi Auto Parts Mich., Inc., 2016 Mich. App. LEXIS 912 (May 10, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law