Background

• A statute of limitation is a legal deadline that specifies how much time can pass from an injury or breach occurring before the injured party can no longer sue in court on the matter. Generally, contract law provides for three to four years to sue on a contract breach, and tort law provides one to two years for tort injuries.
  
  With regards to a nationwide federal law on wrongful termination, there is no umbrella statute passed by Congress that applies to all 50 states. Because no federal statute of limitations exists on wrongful termination cases, states have enacted their own laws.
  
  

Legal Category

• When it comes to filing deadlines in courts, much depends on the legal category of the alleged wrongful termination. For instance, wrongful termination can be based on discrimination, violation of civil rights, equal employment opportunity rights, violation of some state or federal law allowing an absence to occur (voting, military service, etc.), or breach of written employment contract.
  
  

Varying Deadlines

• Victims of wrongful termination need to act quickly to preserve their legal position. In some cases the applicable statute of limitations may be as little as a few weeks to take action. For instance, after a case has been reviewed by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and approved by their office, you have 90 days from receiving the approval notice to file a lawsuit against your employer. However, if a state law is also alleged to have been violated at the same time, the deadline to file is extended for a longer period (up to 300 days).
  
  State laws vary even further. For example, New Jersey law provides a one-year statute of limitations for employees terminated for being conscientious as defined under that state's law. California provides government terminations only six months to respond by lawsuit per state Government Code section 911.2.
  
  

Written Versus Implied Contract Rights

• Legally the strongest and longest lasting rights in terms of deadlines occur within written employment contracts. The wronged employee can choose between pursuing an action based on a personal right or take his or her time and sue as a contract breach. While the victim employee gets more time suing as a contract breach, damages that can be won tend to be limited to just those assets promised in the contract. Legal fees tend to be outside the recovery.
  
  An implied contract tends to be a trickier situation. The victim has to show some kind of understood agreement existed between the employee and the employer. While this has the same time deadlines as a written contract, if it gets thrown out as not being a contract, the victim can't go back and sue under personal rights. Most of those statute of limitations will have expired well before the implied contract approach under contract law.
  
  

At-Will Employees

• At-will employees have even fewer rights to pursue wrongful termination than other kinds of employees. In short, at-will basically means both the employer and employee can end the employment at any time without providing a reason.
  
  To have any statute of limitations apply to wrongful termination, the at-will employee must sue under some basis that is protected, frequently by state or federal law. Causes that take action tend to be used. These include discrimination, civil rights violations, and equal employment opportunity violations.