my life with depression.com

ok. so i hired a labor lawyer to do pre-litigation negotiations with my last biotech employer which has since been purchased by a big pharmaceutical company. i’m demanding $150,000. i based it on mental illness discrimination. i was terminated while on state disability and i was denied my rights to the family medical leave act (FMLA). while on state approved disability, there was a background investigation on me - most likely preparing something to use on me once i got back to work, if they were not able to terminate me during my leave. mind you that it is HARDER to get an approval from the state for disability than it is to get FMLA. i also sited harassment because i was continually having to be on the phone with either human resources or an agency for them — while on MENTAL stress leave. THEY WERE ACTUALLY MAKING ME WORSE! my manager knew and his manager knew and human resources knew of my depression yet when my manager asked them for direction, he received no word of it. mind you i think during this time, i had to increase my dose. i was crying in front of my manager, in front of my customers and in front of my manager AND my customers.

so my lawyer is asking me to be flexible and to not be married to the number. after how many weeks of waiting for the opposing counsel to come back to us with a number, we finally got $25K. my lawyer says that’s a good number and that they are serious and that we shouldn’t loose this momentum their wanting to talk with us. she suggested that we counter with 120K. i have a problem with that because i already didn’t believe that we should’ve started at $150K. the higher the starting value, the higher the ending value could be given that there’s a lot more room to play with. i will not go below the 100K mark though. if i do, then i’m asking for 2 years insurance and payment of my lawyer’s fees and her 35% commission.

suing will cost me a retainer of $10k and 45% commissions. that’s bullshit, but i think that if we go to trial with a jury, then they almost always side with the lowly employee.

while having to protect myself against the pharma company, i also have to protect myself from my lawyer. her end goals are far different from mine. maybe the amount of that she will make on my case doesn’t have to be as high as i think is fair for the company to front for discriminating and harassing me.

anyways, she said a good counter offer of possibly 120K would be good. by going down to 145K, that number still looks like 150K to them. at the same time, i told her that i didn’t want to look like i didn’t care about what i ended up with by just dropping by a huge number. she said going down by 25K since they countered with 25K wouldn’t be good because it would start a tit-4-tat. so i offered 19500K. it looks nothing like 150K AND it looks nothing like 120K. it feels like i’ve dropped by a whole lot. look:

$150,000 vs. $119,500

they better work harder. i will sue.