Wrongful Termination: losing rights due to bad advice

Recently, one of my clients referred to me his former colleague. After having a long conversation with him, it became clear to me that he was a victim of blatant disability discrimination and retaliation for filing a workers compensation claim and for complaining about harassment because of his medical condition to the superiors of his HR manager.

There was nothing I could do to help him, however, because of the bad advice of his union representative, who told the employee that he could not file a lawsuit against the employer in court till he submitted his wrongful termination claim to Arbitration under the Collective Bargaining Agreement through a union, which he was a member of. As a result, an employee took no court action and waited till the union arbitrated his grievance. The employee contacted me shortly after he lost at the arbitration. The bad news were that our conversation took place 2 years and 1 month after his termination – a month after the statute of limitations has run on all his claims and they were all barred.