Responding to a Plaintiff Attorney’s Demand Letter

It is quite common for plaintiff’s attorneys to write a letter to a company, popularly called a “demand letter,” claiming the employer has violated some law, claiming astronomical damages, demanding the company preserve relevant data, and offering the “opportunity” for a settlement resolution. The theory behind such letter is to scare the employer and encourage the employer to negotiate a settlement favorable to the plaintiff, and to the plaintiff’s attorney. In recent times, the frequency of these demand letters has increased, possibly because plaintiff’s attorneys now often use AI and other methods to make their demand letters to look more sophisticated, and the like. Further complicating the situation is that plaintiff’s attorneys are setting up increasingly sophisticated and perhaps AI-related networks to learn about potential cases and make demands on more employers.

The strategy and tactics regarding responding to such demand letters vary. The purpose of this webinar is to educate the employer community on plaintiffs’ latest tactics in making such demands, the various methods of responding to such demand letters, and giving employers additional information and considerations in responding to these type situations.

This webinar was conducted by Jim Wimberly.

The Evolving Landscape of Demand Letters

• Plaintiff attorneys often utilize aggressive marketing tactics, such as creating the appearance of large, multi-jurisdictional firms to intimidate employers.
• The rise of artificial intelligence has enabled plaintiffs to draft more sophisticated, comprehensive, and intimidating demand letters, effectively leveling the playing field for pro se litigants.
• Demand letters are frequently used as a tool to secure quick, low-effort settlements, as plaintiffs' attorneys often operate on a contingency fee basis and prioritize high-volume, low-time-investment resolutions.

Legal Risks and Record Retention

• Employers must immediately suspend standard document destruction policies upon receiving notice of actual or contemplated litigation to avoid severe legal sanctions.
• Failure to preserve relevant records can lead to adverse inference instructions, where a judge may instruct a jury to assume the missing evidence was damaging to the employer.
• Internal company policies regarding record retention do not supersede legal obligations once a claim is initiated.

Strategic Response Protocols

• Ignoring demand letters is generally discouraged, as it may be perceived as an implied admission of guilt or fear during future litigation.
• A standard, professional, and concise response denying liability and directing future communication to legal counsel is the recommended baseline approach.
• Consistency is critical; changing the stated reasons for employment actions during litigation is often viewed as evidence of pretext for discrimination.
• Position statements provided to the EEOC are discoverable and will likely be shared with the plaintiff; therefore, they must be drafted with extreme precision and legal oversight.

Action Items

1. Establish a formal, consistent protocol for responding to all demand letters, prioritizing a concise denial of liability and routing all future correspondence through legal counsel.
2. Implement an immediate 'litigation hold' process that suspends standard document destruction schedules for any employee or department involved in a potential claim.
3. Review and standardize the language used in termination notices and disciplinary documentation to ensure reasons for action are clear, broad enough to encompass relevant evidence, and consistent across all internal and external communications.
4. Evaluate the organization's philosophy on settlement versus litigation to ensure a consistent reputation, while carefully weighing the risks of setting precedents with lucrative, confidential settlements.
5. Engage legal counsel to review all position statements prior to submission to the EEOC to ensure factual accuracy and to mitigate the risk of creating damaging admissions.

James W. Wimberly (00:00):
I'm Jim Wimberly. This is an interesting subject, in my opinion, responding to plaintiff attorney's demand letters. And I'm gonna start with the current situation because I think it's illustrative of some of the situations we're seeing now. And then we can discuss how to apply the strategy. My client gets a letter from a group known as the Capital Rights Law Group. It's several pages long. It, , is full of detailed facts, detailed statements of the law, and detailed demands for what they want my client to pay. , They asked for <laugh>, just to give you an idea, several thousand dollars of back pay, $300,000 of compensatory damages, that's pain and suffering, 500,000 of attorney's fees, and $18,500 of filing fees, depositions, transcripts, expert subpoena expenses, et cetera. And they make certain demands and set certain deadlines. So what also, when my client doesn't immediately respond to this letter, they send similar emails to everybody they might write to at my client.

James W. Wimberly (01:15):
, Presumably they went on the company's website and found out how to contact different people. And so my client emails me that a lot of their personnel are getting these kind of letters. What can they do? And that sort of thing. So we start looking at the background of this capital rights law group. Incredibly interesting. , First, it was a, really a weird website, , in which they listed the names and pictures of certain attorneys. And these attorneys were scattered all over. , Several, , I think four were headquartered in Puerto Rico. , And most of the others were in DC or the Northeastern part of the country. And, , as we checked the website from time to time, the name seems to change in this sort of thing. And here's what I surmise what kind of group they are. I think they're sort of a marketing group that's banded together to look big, important, powerful, and therefore give themselves more credibility in dealing with defendant employer.

James W. Wimberly (02:22):
, We even looked up the backgrounds of some of the lawyers. , One of them had not been disbarred, but he'd been suspended from the bar for a year. So that was a <laugh> a red flag to me. , You know, having some suspended lawyers as part of their group, , doesn't speak very well of them. Now, the strangest part is yet to come. No less than eight such demand letters and different fact patterns and different demands were sent to several of our clients in Southeastern Georgia. You know, how they found out about these claims, now it's probably easy to find out the name of somebody who's filed an EEOC charge. I think that's probably available under open records. But in the case of people who have not filed, filed EEOC charges, how did they find out the names of these people to pursue these cases in different parts of the country?

James W. Wimberly (03:23):
I can't answer that question right now, but it, it continues on and on. , They do file EEOC charges. The EEOC writes us, , , giving us the option of mediation, which is kind of a standard practice where they try to settle cases with an EEOC official mediating or encouraging a settlement. , They write letters to me wanting to know if we're interested in mediation. , They write information requests to me, wanting to know facts and detail. We don't have any obligation to, to answer a demand like that from an attorney. , This is not in court. It's not before the EEOC. , He's just asking for information. Every few weeks, I get another letter from him wanting this side or the other, wanting to know if we had a arbitration procedure, what was our position gonna be as to whether, , the case has to go to arbitration rather than court and things of that nature.

James W. Wimberly (04:22):
Now, what do I conclude from all of this process? I have stated to you, I think this is a group of lawyers who's got, who've gotten together for marketing purposes. And by the way, AI has enabled plaintiffs and plaintiff's attorneys to make, , much more, , comprehensive and impressive demand letter. As a matter of fact, , now 20% of all pro bono plaintiff's lawsuits, now pro bono lawsuit is one, I don't mean pro bono, I mean filed by the plaintiff himself pro se without an attorney. , They've gotten much more sophisticated because regular plaintiffs are learning how to use AI to draft up demands and lawsuits and things of that nature. , It, it's incredible what, what AI can do. And AI is a great equalizer. Even an individual plaintiff's lawyer can get information and use AI in a manner that puts him on equal steady with a big law firm.

James W. Wimberly (05:25):
So if anything, AI will encourage litigation, not discourage. So, and anyway, this is the background and a current example of what plaintiff's firms are doing now. So now let's get to the strategy of how we respond to such tech. Next slide. First, and you probably already know some of these things, this is kind of my summary. It's a common practice for plaintiff's attorneys to make a demand letter to the employer. And, and why do they do this? Well, almost all plaintiff's employment lawyers work on a contingency basis. What does that mean and how much do they get? They advertise that their fees are free, , and, , therefore plaintiffs are welcome to use their service. And, , they are paid as a proportion of the winnings or damages or how much the plaintiff receives in the litigation. That's why they advertise it's free, and if you win, we get a propor - a portion of your winnings.

James W. Wimberly (06:28):
What portion do they get? Well, , a well-known plaintiff's firm here in Atlanta gets 45%. I'm aware of billboards all over this city, probably in your city too, saying you're a 25% lawyer. This means that he only gets 25% of the pros. But that's how they make a living. And, , this is why some of the wealthiest attorneys out there are plaintiff's lawyers that bring these mass tort cases and things of that nature. Can you imagine what, , 40% of a billion dollar recovery would be? Astronomical. Now, in these demand letters, just like we discussed a few minutes ago, they try to be impressive. We're a big, powerful law firm that knows what we're doing and we know the facts of your case. And so they write these letters that explain the law, the damages, just like my client got from this Capital Lights Law.

James W. Wimberly (07:29):
They put the employer on notice to retain relevant rec - , they do that for, for two reasons. , One is, again, it's part of scaring the employer. And, and secondly, they wanna use it against the employer if they don't retain relevant records. And I wanna comment on that. , I recently had a major, major case, went on for at least two or three years. And there was one witness we had in the case, , other than the fact that a supervisor was having an affair with a subordinate, which we conte- contended was totally voluntary. And, , but some of the complaint of actions occurred at the work site in a warehouse. And the plaintiffs in depositions and requests for, , interrogatories, requests for information, asked a lot of questions about where we, , , what kind of video cameras we had, surveillance cameras, how long we retained those records and things of that nature.

James W. Wimberly (08:32):
This was our Achilles heel because, , most companies retain production videos for 30 days. This one kept them for a year. , The employer made an effort to keep other relevant records, but just forgot about the video recordings of the production areas, in this case, the warehouse here. And, , you know, fortunately, we dodged that problem because the warehouse only had video cameras in two places, and neither one would've recorded what the plaintiff was complaining about. But what happens if you don't retain relevant records? It's scary. It's possible for a judge to say, "You lose the case." It's possible for a judge to say, "At a minimum, I'm gonna instruct the jury that the employer did not retain the records it was required to re- retain under the law." And you can assume from your fa - from the employer's failure to keep those records, that they had something to hide.

James W. Wimberly (09:36):
It's called an adverse inference instruction from the employers violating, , record keeping requirements once being put on notice of actual or contemplated litigation. That's the key that triggers the obligation. Now, you can't come back and say, "Well, I didn't have to do it because the law says that we have to keep those records for one year," or whatever the record keeping requirement is. You can't come back and say, "Well, our company policy is we only keep such records for 60 days, six months, or what have you." That doesn't mean a thing. You are required to suspend normal, , , record retention periods pending the determination of the litigation if it's relevant to the client. So that's a very important lesson that I want you to remember because you can get in a lot of trouble by not retaining relevant records, and you need advice of an attorney with what would be considered relevant.

James W. Wimberly (10:37):
So in any event, getting back to the demand letter, they give you an opportunity to negotiate a settlement without litigation. They scare you about the potential damages. Now, let's look at it from the plaintiff attorney standpoint. If he can get a pl - a client, I'm sorry, a defendant employer to pay his client $100,000 to settle the case and only put three or four or five or six hours into the case, and he gets a third, let's say 40% of that, which is $40,000, he gets $40,000 out of six or eight hours work, that's pretty good money. It's astronomical money. So the plaintiff attorney has every hope of working out a quick resolution of the case so that he gets his money quickly and can make such a nice profit. If that attorney has to litigate three or four years, , that profit goes way down.

James W. Wimberly (11:36):
The attorney may put more time in the case that is worth the mo - recovery. So this is why plaintiff wants to hit early and hard so he can work out a resolution without putting a lot of time in the case. Next. So what are the options for the employer when they get such a demand letter? Well, one is to just ignore it. And I'm gonna give you a war story about it. , The other is to provide a short response simply denying a violation of the law and any legal liability and telling the plaintiff's attorney that all further correspondence should come through the attorney since they represent the employer. The third type response is to give a very detailed response and possibly even, , some proof, , documents, a declaration, something like that. So what are the pros and cons of each approach? Now, I'll, I wanna give you what my more regular practice has been, and then I wanna give you the options.

James W. Wimberly (12:38):
First, as a rule, , my thought was not to ignore the demand. Now, why do I say not to ignore it? Now I'm talking about in terms of responding to the plaintiff's lawyer. I feared that a plaintiff would offer at trial that they wrote the employer, made these claims, and the employer was scared to respond, indicating the employer was impliedly admitting its guilt. That's my fear. Have I ever seen that in a case? Well, in all the years I've seen this come up, and of course, we generally only see cases that are appealed because trial cases, the, , un- unless it's a judge decision, you don't get to see the decision. But in any event, I've only seen a couple of cases where a judge cited the fact that the employer didn't respond to a demand, , a claim as having any significance legally. But in any event, you don't want your personnel director on the witness stand and the plaintiff's lawyer, , asking your personnel manager, "You got this letter.

James W. Wimberly (13:49):
You know it said such and such happened. You know it said the plaintiff was entitled to such and such a money, and you didn't even deny it by writing an attorney back, did you?" Now, is that gonna mean anything to a judge or jury? Don't know. But why even risk? That's why I don't favor ignoring the demand. Now, on occasion, , it may help to give a detailed response and even possibly proof. And let me tell you why and the, the odds and ends of that. , If you're representing a company, your goal ought to be to avoid the potential loss and cost to your client. That is what a lawyer's supposed to do. So if the employer's attorney can convince the plaintiff to drop the claim or not to sue, that would accomplish that goal. So maybe by offering a lot of information to the plaintiff's attorney, you can discourage that attorney from bringing a lawsuit.

James W. Wimberly (14:51):
Now, let me tell you something that affects this process. , You know, the most common type legal claims are probably discrimination claims and wage and hour claim. , Discrimination claims normally go through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employers generally are obligated to file a response to an information request in connection with an EEOC charge within 15 days. You can get an extension of time though, and usually do. , So the employer in the EEOC investigation normally tries to put its best foot forward. Now, just to give you an idea of the variation in responses, I've seen some good position statements that are two pages long, and I've seen some that are 20 pages long, that attach 30 exhibits. So there's, there's no one size fits all as to how extensive a position statement offered to the EEOC in response to their demand for the position statement, which comes with the filing of an EEOC charge.

James W. Wimberly (16:00):
But the rule used to be at the EEOC that the EEOC didn't share those position statements with the plaintiff. That's all changed. The EEOC will typically provide your response to the EEOC to the plaintiff's attorney and give the plaintiff the opportunity to rebut it. They'll say to the plaintiff, "Here's what the employer says. How do you respond and counter what the employer's saying?" And the EEOC will use that in the investigatory process to decide whether to find that there was cause to believe that discrimination occurred or whether they will find, , a no cause finding. , So the plaintiff's attorney is ultimately gonna probably get your response to the EEOC. I think you should assume that they will. So that response is very, , important. Now, I knew in this case of this capital rights law that that lawyer would ultimately get our response. So I sent it to her.

James W. Wimberly (17:05):
I said, "Look, , the EEOC, , is gonna get this response, probably share it with you. , Here's what we said. , You can easily see that you don't have a claim. , If you bring such a claim, we will vigorously defend it and make claim that it was a frivolous litigation and warranted an attorney's fee result for the defendant, which is theoretically possible. Now, I only did that in the late stages. , I don't do that routinely in every case, give them a copy of our position statement to the EEOC, , although they are ultimately gonna get those position statements. So what are the pros and cons of each approach? Well, I'm gonna lead off here with the fallback position. The fallback position is to provide the short response, denying violation of the law and liability and telling the plaintiff's attorney that any further communications to the employer should be through the underside legal counsel of the employer.

James W. Wimberly (18:10):
So that's the fallback position and the position I use, or tactic I use most of the time. Now, I have debated this issue with some of my partners. Some of them sometimes ignore the demand. But, , you know, I, I favor the safer course of a short and sweet response denying violation of the law. So next power point. , Now, so position statements, whether to the EEOC or ultimately to the plaintiff's attorney, are incredibly important, but they're also very dangerous. , Any fact that you assert in that statement is arguably going to be an admission. So first, you might be charged with ad- admitting a fact that hurt you, , maybe one that's not even true, because sometimes these position statements are very sloppily put together, and I'll come back to that in a minute. , Well, no, I'm gonna face it right now. Among our clients, we write the position statement and do the investigation for well over 90% of them, and they like it that way.

James W. Wimberly (19:16):
, Yes, it costs some legal fees, but it's worth it down the line to avoid litigation. , But some clients write their own position statement, and it's not based on the size of the company. Some of them are little companies, some of them are very big companies. Of course, the super big companies, , may have people whose mission in life is just to respond in position statements of this nature. So they have some expertise in here. But in all cases, I would recommend that it be reviewed by legal counsel. So we have an arrangement with some clients where they prepare a draft, and then we review them and make suggestions, revisions, additions, things of that nature. But so, but I'm leading off with a proposition that an, a position statement is sort of an admission of facts. All right. Secondly, one of the most dangerous things for an employer is to change its reasons why it did something, whatever it is, why you fired somebody, why you had a layoff, , et cetera.

James W. Wimberly (20:20):
Because if you change your reasons, that will often be considered if, or normally be considered, a pretext for talking out of both sides of your mouth or evidence of discrimination in itself by changing your reasons. There's a Supreme Court decision saying just that, US Supreme Court. It says that any time the employer changes its reasons for personal action during the course of the litigation, it can be considered as evidence of a pretext for discrimination. It doesn't have to be or it can be, but it can be. Why face that? Be very careful how you word in your termination notice and other major employment decisions, why you did what you did. Now, I'm gonna give you a little practical point here, really a little bit outside of our topic today, but I'm very conscious of the problem of changing the position. So, , sometimes, , I will say something broad so I can later bring any evidence or any reason.

James W. Wimberly (21:25):
By the way, if your reason is narrow, the judge may not even let you introduce other evidence. They'll say, "Why are you trying to put in that other evidence? That ain't why you fired the person. I'm not gonna let it in." So in addition to finding pretext for discrimination, you may not even be able to get the evidence into court. And sometimes I'm very nervous about some of the reasons put down by my client. So I try to make the statement of the reason broad enough to include anything I might offer. For example, I do have a fallback. This wasn't original with me. This was, , told to me by my deceased initial boss named Bill Pate. He says he sometimes puts in termination notices, "Failure to meet expectations of management." And I have sometimes suggested that in some situations. Now, it's not the best of reasons.

James W. Wimberly (22:18):
I guess it's better than no reason at all. It's probably better than poor attitude, but it ain't the best way of all, but it can be useful as a fallback. And then even better, you can say failure to meet expectations of management, including but not limited to the falling, and then list certain specific items. Now, sometimes it helps to list several reasons for an action. Why? Listen to this. Say you list three reasons for firing somebody. The prevailing case law is if you prove one of those three, you win the case, even though you weren't able to prove the other two. Now, I'm maybe exaggerating a little bit, simplifying a little bit, but I think I, you get the point that the statement of reasons for a disciplinary action or other act is very important. Also, remember that our position statements give plaintiffs information. , During the course of, , their...

James W. Wimberly (23:15):
Remember, they'll get your position statement that you file with EEOC before they file a lawsuit, probably. So they'll be able to word their lawsuit in a manner to arguably improve their position that it would have been had they gone in blind without the information and filing the lawsuit. The next one that they will be provided to the plaintiff. Also, failure to cite certain facts and reasons will have to be explained in court. , And, and one big case we litigated, , we wrote a very comprehensive position statement, provided a lot of, , of documents. My guess, it was a good 20 pages long and included at least 25 exhibits. It was great, in my opinion. But there was point that the plaintiff's attorney jumped all over one of our witnesses in their depositions. It was a fairly minor point. But I just want you to know that they're going to look at what you say very carefully to try to criti- criticize it as being a change in position, incomplete or inaccurate.

James W. Wimberly (24:26):
Next PowerPoint. All right. This is my third and last PowerPoint before I open this up for question. , The EEOC is going to give you the opportunity to mediate. They do it in almost every case, in every case. And, , you know, they say it's free. You can resolve the case without having to file a position statement. Sounds great. But two things. Number one, under these OC's current schedule, , the mediation is probably gonna be six months down the road. So, , the government is running way behind in so many things and it, it just didn't come up during the Trump administration. It's been going on the last, I would say, six or eight years. , And so you don't get immediate mediation that's well down the road. Secondly, you know in mediation, you're expected to offer something to settle the case. Now, I'll tell you the way I have resolved many cases, and I, I would do it in a minute on most cases.

James W. Wimberly (25:31):
, It doesn't work as much as it used to. You tell the plaintiff or the plaintiff's attorney, "Oh, hey, we'll convert your discharge to a resignation and provide neutral job ref-" What's wrong with that? So if you ever consider mediating and so forth, I do wanna tell you a war story. I got a friend who's retired now. , And he, he was so proud of this that he even gave this presentation at a, a meeting, an industry meeting. He said, "Yeah, I, I, I often mediate." And he said, "I always put about $1,000 worth of money in my pocket." And he says... Now, it used to be that mediations were face-to-face. Now they're usually remote, so it'd be difficult to do this and you could do it. But he was saying <laugh>, "You know, you making all these demands for us and we, we just aren't gonna do it, but I tell you what I'll do, you know, I got $500 in my pocket.

James W. Wimberly (26:34):
Here it is. If you'll settle for that, this case is over." And he bragged that he settled a lot of cases that way. Now, I've never used that technique, but I was amused by it. It's just to give an example of anything can result from mediation. But you're expected to do something. Now, should you make an early settlement offer? Is that helpful or harmful? , Actually, this is the last item for discussion because we've already discussed the capital rights law. So think of your questions you wanna ask at the end. , Let me tell you my feelings on it. First, I wanna give you the things that no one could argue about. Some companies don't believe in settlement. , I, I'll give you an example. , And I won't mention any individual names, but this person, , was an attorney of ours and he went to work for Delta Airlines.

James W. Wimberly (27:29):
And, , I asked him one time while he was at Delta how he liked working there as compared to private practice. And he came back with an interesting answer. He said, "Yeah, I love working at Delta because they don't settle cases. We fight everyone. That's what we believe in." I've had a lot of clients, you take labor arbitration. I've done more than 500 of them. I had one client that had the opinion, "You know, Jim, we back our supervisor. And if anybody tells us to put somebody back to work, we ain't gonna do it. It's gonna be an arbitrator." So some companies just believe in fighting every cases, every case. And so they acquire reputations in that manner. And so plaintiffs are more reluctant to sue them because they know they'll be fought every tooth of the way. Other companies always settle. And frankly, I know a company that, , , had that attitude and I had to defend some of their cases.

James W. Wimberly (28:30):
And, , low-balling a settlement offer didn't work with them because they knew the company was always ultimately gonna back down and do anything to stop a case going to court or going to a trial. So remember that your practices in either settling or fighting are gonna set a pattern. And you might say, "Well, we'll get a confidentiality agreement and therefore we aren't setting a pattern because nobody will know about it." Well, , then you believe in the tooth fair. I think the word's gonna get around one way or the other. Now, I, I do believe in strong confidentiality provisions and settlement agreement, but I always worry about the word getting around. And social media is so much bigger than it used to be. You know, , I don't use social media personally. I don't really have any conception of it, but I'm shocked that even low income jobs and plants, they're really into social media and they get all this information, some of it correct, some of it incorrect.

James W. Wimberly (29:37):
And in all my career, which goes back a long, long time, I've never been able to sue somebody for violating the confidentiality provision of a settlement agreement, although in some cases I was suspicious that word had gotten out. , I even had a situation where I had a more of an informal settlement agreement with a A union attorney. And, , he thought I violated the confidentiality provisions and I was able to tell him very forcefully I had not. And in any event, so getting back to the $64,000 question, , are early settlement offers helpful or harmful? Well, first, I'm maybe the first one, I don't know if it was my idea, but sometimes I enter into confidentiality agreements before I even make a settlement offer. I make it a condition of the settlement and have the plaintiff or their attorney sign off on. Is that foolproof?

James W. Wimberly (30:31):
Probably not for the reasons I said earlier, but it's better than nothing. It's an idea for me to consider. But secondly, I have a rule of thumb that in the vast majority of cases, it's cheaper to settle than it is to fight. I repeat. In the vast majority of cases, it's simpler to settle or cheaper to settle than it is to fight. On the other hand, I don't think with confidence you can say that word of this won't get around. So the simplistic answer to this dilemma is if your settlement offer is so low that it won't embarrass you if other people find out about it and bring on more litigation, it's probably okay to offer. But if it's the kind of offer that's so lucrative that if it gets around, you're gonna have a lot more cases going forward, then that's a different ballgame.

James W. Wimberly (31:21):
But I can tell you, every company that I've dealt with has its own philosophy on settlement, number one. And number two, it's very fact-based to that particular situation. There's not a one size fits all solution. Now, I'll tell you something else to consider. Say you've got a, a, a discharge ca - and it's bothering you because you may have a chance to win. I mean, lose. But the plaintiff has moved to another part of the country. Consider without prejudice to the position that the termination was lawful, an unconditional law for reinstatement. It stops off the back pay at that point. That's just food for though.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Thank you. Can anyone hear me?

James W. Wimberly (32:00):
Yay. <Laugh> Tell me you got a question to make me happy.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
I do. <Laugh> Great. <Laugh> I was just wondering, , sort of what's the rule of thumb nowadays with, , you know, a lot of states are, , at real states. However, , it seems as though - Okay. It seems as though, although most states are at will, it seems as though employers are still tasked with, , the burden of proof in terms of, , whether or not it was a wrongful termination or whatever the case may be in the, in, in the, in the event that a previous employee files a lawsuit.

James W. Wimberly (32:39):
Okay. A good question. And, , I'm gonna give you probably a little more background than you want. But if you want a one sentence answer, the argument about employment at will means nothing in terms of complying with federal and state employment laws. And I'll back that up, , this follow-up. Technically, 49 of the 50 states have at-will employment. There's one state out west that has a cause requirement. All the other 49 states claim to be at will. Now, once you get to a state like California, their definition of at-will is a little different than ours in Georgia. When you're defending a discrimination case, a retaliation case, , anything like that, , you know, the at-will argument means nothing, doesn't do any good legally. As a matter of fact, how good does it sound to a jury when you argue to the jury? Jurors, our company has a policy firing people for good reason, a bad reason, and no reason at all.

James W. Wimberly (33:46):
We find people at the drop of a hat. I wouldn't wanna make that argument to a jury, probably not to a judge. So, , I'm afraid the premise for your question doesn't hold up because, , whether there's some state law that, , gives you an employee only at-will has nothing to do with the numerous discrimination and retaliation laws passed by the state and federal government. And indeed, I don't even know that I'd wanna make that argument to a jury because they wouldn't think we were fair if we fired employees for no reason at all. That would be my answer. And let me say this, a lot of companies don't understand or appreciate what I just said, but that's real life. Thank you for attending. Good afternoon. Have a good weekend.