Employee offered to settle for $6K after company reneged on promises that lured him from his 9-year job. They refused — now he’s suing for $35K

Most of the modern employment relationships work on at-will terms, meaning an employer can fire a worker at any time due to legal reasons. But one employer used outright deception to poach a worker’s talent. In a September 22, 2026, Reddit post, a Canada-based worker (u/PicaroKaguya) described that they were lured out of their 9-year-old job by a former employer. The employer guaranteed their number of hours and failed to honor it, among other promises. When the worker questioned them, the company abruptly terminated them. So the worker filed a fraudulent inducement claim, suing this employer with a $35,000 penalty. Their post has since recorded 25,000 upvotes.

Unreasonable termination 

The company had bragged about how much work they had and reached out to them and induced them away from their 9-year job. They drafted a contract with AI, revised it thrice, and then failed to honor the promises documented in it. When the employee spoke up, the company fired them. The worker mentioned that the region they reside in is a "pro-employee" region, meaning the law mostly favors the employee in such cases. So they had trust that their plea would be heard, and they took the advice of their lawyer to sue their former employer, a private equity HVAC company.

The best retaliation

The $35,000 amount was exactly what their lawyer suggested, even though they were okay with even $6,000 since they got a new job in a municipality two months after getting terminated. Their lawyer suggested that they’d have more chance of winning if they self-represented in a small claims court. As they had anticipated, the court favored them over the opposing council. The council held tantrums in giving a date for the next hearing, but the court flipped a finger and assigned a date for July 2027.

Looking ahead, the employee is deriving satisfaction from the fact that even if they don’t win the lawsuit, their former employer would have shelled out $10,000 to $20,000 in the legal fees. This would be their best revenge against the unfair treatment.

The case of fraudulent inducement

Cases like these come under fraudulent inducement and wrongful termination. A nationwide survey by the National Employment Law Project revealed that more than two out of three discharged workers receive no reason or an unfair reason for termination. Three out of four workers didn’t receive an advance warning before being fired. According to Hyring, an average wrongful termination settlement costs between $40,000 and $100,000 to the employer, and there are around 55.8% claims of retaliation.

'Delicious justice'

Readers empathized with the undue distress that the employee had to bear due to deliberate falsehood and wrongful termination. u/Bleezy79 said, “Good luck, and private equity companies are the worst. They destroy everything they buy in the pursuit of ‘profits at all costs.’ You were just a cog in the wheel for them. Anyone who isn’t an executive in a PE company is only useful when they can be exploited, and if/when you stand up for yourself, they fire you and repeat the process with someone else.” u/FreeBird1034 speculated, “They probably have umbrella insurance that covers their legal fees if they get sued.” u/Dekipi remarked, "Delicious, delicious justice.”

More on Scoop Upworthy

Boss fired a programmer and claimed his software as his own—unaware the employee had left a surprise buried inside the code

The manager tried to quietly replace an employee with an 'intern' earning $10K more. The plan backfired when they left

The supervisor tried to fire an employee without telling HR—then the move backfired so badly they ended up quitting