Did Your Employer Misrepresent Your Job Or Withhold Vital Information? That May Be Fraud

It’s not unusual that people are duped into giving notice at their job, only to have the offer pulled or find out the job is nonexistent. Some folks get lured into a job with promises of higher pay, better title, specific hours or location, and it turns out that the representations made to lure them in weren’t true. If this happens, you might have a case for fraud.

There are two types of fraud that Florida courts recognize in these situations. The first is a false statement made, knowing it is false, intending that you rely on it. A good example is what happened in Gandy v. Trans World Computer Tech, 787 So. 2d 116 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001). There, an employee alleged that he was induced to terminate his lucrative business as a freelance consultant with the promise of long-term employment as a manager. The employee alleged that, when the offer was made, the company had no intention of keeping him as a long-term employee but rather intended to force him to quit after a division was created. These allegations withstood a motion to dismiss.

So if you leave your job based on an offer that you'll be the manager, only to find out you're the janitor or secretary, said you'd be paid $100K/year and then paid much less, or if you find out you were only hired to be a temp to fill in for someone out on disability or maternity leave, you might have a fraud case. You may also have a breach of contract case, but that's another post for another day.

The other type of fraud is fraudulent concealment, basically, failure to disclose information that the employer has that would have made you decline the offer. A good example is what happened in Telesphere International, Inc. v. Scollin, 489 So. 2d 1152 (Fla. 3rd DCA 1986), where the employer, through a principal, had fraudulently induced an employee to join the company by deliberately failing to inform him that the system he was hired to market would fail and he would be discharged. The appellate court found that the plaintiff had pled the elements of actionable fraudulent concealment: the defendant deliberately and in order to deceive withheld material facts from plaintiff, when there was a duty to disclose, where the party making the representation had superior knowledge in the matter or acted in a confidential or fiduciary capacity, when plaintiff relied on the lack of disclosure to his detriment.

These are just some examples of what would be fraud. I cited Florida cases, but the claims are likely similar in other states as well. So if your employer misrepresented the job or the pay, or withheld vital information, you might have a remedy.