Defamation of Character

[daveruni13]

I worked for a job for about a year and a half and I was going to leave for a seasonal job so I talked to my general manager and put in my two weeks notice. He suggested going on a leave of absence for a while in case I wanted to come back to the job so I wouldn't have to be terminated from the system. During this time, that General Manager was fired and a new one took over the job. After about a month the regional manager called me and asked if I wanted to come back and work and I declined going back to the job. I started applying for jobs in January and wasn't able to find a job until May when a friend got me a job with him. Later on I spoke to the new general manager at the store who told me that I had been fired from the store. When I asked another manager I knew when I worked there to look it up for me and let me know the status, I was told that the computer showed that I was involuntarily terminated from the system. For all I know I could have not gotten any calls back from other jobs because of a bad reference that I didn't know about. Do I have a valid defamation of character lawsuit against the company for the time I was out of work and didn't know why I couldn't get a job and the false information they were giving out about me?

 

[presutin]

The sticky issue here is that it seems that the new GM fired you for job abandonment since, per your posting, there was nothing in the system informing anyone that you were on a leave of absence or that there was a record for a request for leave of absence. Unless you have concrete proof that you didn't get other jobs because of the type of reference given to those who checked up on you, it is all hearsay. So, from what I can see on your posting, you don't have much of a case here to proceed.