Former employer may have told a client I was fired (I was laid off), costing me a job with the client. North Carolina has an anti-blacklisting statute. Do I have a case?
I worked as a management consultant for 10 years (salaried employee) until I was laid off last summer. The day I was laid off, I called the client I was working with to let him know and he immediately asked if I wanted to come work for him. He followed up with a link to apply. I applied and heard nothing for months despite several follow-ups. I assumed that my former boss had gotten to him and bad-mouthed me.
Four months later, my former client called and explained that he had tried to hire me but HR blocked it — because someone told them I had been terminated, not laid off. The role was doing exactly what I had been doing as a consultant, but instead being employed directly by the client. I was qualified and the client wanted me but was told no.
I have documentation proving I was laid off, and I have recorded calls (one-party consent state) of: (1) the original conversation where the client told me to apply, (2) my layoff call with the consulting firm, and (3) call where client confirmed he wanted to hire me but HR blocked it because they'd been told by someone (not specified) I was terminated by my former employer.
A couple weeks after that, he circled back and said it may have been a mix-up and that I had been cleared to reapply — but he never followed up again after that.
I believe my former boss (who was never a fan of mine) told someone at the client company that I was fired in order to blackball me from being hired there. I've now been out of work for a year when I could have been employed almost immediately.
Location: New York. The client and the role were in North Carolina, which has an anti-blacklisting statute.
Questions:
- Do I have a viable case/is this worth pursuing via a demand letter?
- Should I hire a lawyer in New York or North Carolina?
- I'd prefer not to be named in a lawsuit if possible — is that realistic?
edit: So, after re-reviewing the recordings this evening, the client said he wanted to hire me, but was told by his leadership that “he should stop pursuing me.“ I was wrong about the “terminated” verbiage — they didn’t say that. He said he was given no further detail but said it sounded like it came from my former employer. Is that not blacklisting?