Can Ex-Employer Sue Employee? HELP!!!

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TwinGuns18

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CA.

I was employed at my previous job about 2 months ago. I worked at a call center. I got a rude woman on the phone. I saved her number and gave it to my cousin so he could prank call her. He sent her a text that said, "I'm going to talk dirty to you." He sent it from an website where you can change the number of the sender. He made it appear to be from me.

She called our main headquarters, complained and said she would sue the company for sexual harassment. They traced the number back to my phone. The branch I worked for wasn't the head company. We did work under them. If the lawsuit goes through, my ex boss may loose that side of his company. I.E. The headquarters will take away their authorization to work under tham

Consequently, I was fired and am owed over $2000.00 in unpaid wages. I filed a wage claim. My boss is threatening to sue me if he looses that part of his company. He said he will file suit for 500K+ dollars. Can he and does he have a case?

I'm 20 years old. I'm in California, the Lady was in Ohio, and our headquarters are in NY. I need to know if I'm in danger of facing a lawsuit here. If so, I don't have any assets so what could he claim?
 
Yes, employers can sue ex-employees (or current employees, for that matter). In the event your former employer loses its authorization to conduct that line of business, your former employer's cause of action will probably be negligence: you failed to take due care as an employee, resulting in damage to the company. Possibly, it might sue for breach of contract, depending on what the terms of your employment were (i.e. not give out confidential caller information to other persons, that kind of thing).

Whether or not it will succeed is a different question. The company would need to prove that the harm it suffered (losing the business) was reasonably foreseeable - i.e. that you should have known something bad could happen. I could see that going either way.

The company would claim financial damages against you in various forms: damage from any payment they have to make in the sexual harassment suit, and loss of future income (either because they lose their authorization to conduct business or because they lose clients as a result of this) are probably the big two. Sounds like your assets are minimal, so likely your employer's costs of going to court will outweigh anything it could hope to gain. I wouldn't imagine it would proceed against you knowing its going to lose them money. It also makes it look like a bunch of jerks and less attractive to potential employees.
 
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