Licenses Expired While on Military Leave
I have been on military leave on orders then deployment. I spoke to management to make sure that my series 6 & 63 would be ok when I return. I am in the process of returning to work and management told me that my licenses expired and they have no idea why. I feel that my company is negligent and feel that a lawsuit for negligence is in order. Can anyone let me know if this is possible?
Re: Licenses Expired While on Military Leave
First, you need to tell us what state you are licensed in. While FINRA administers the exams, the licenses themselves come from the state regulatory office.
Re: Licenses Expired While on Military Leave
In order to bring a good negligence claim, you must first establish that your employer owed you a legal duty to you to do something to maintain your licenses. In at least the states I practice, there is no legal duty for the employer to do that unless the employer expressly undertook that obligation, and I suspect that is true in most if not all states. So unless the employer expressly agreed to do something specific here to maintain the license and the reason that the license expired was the failure by the employer to do what it had expressly agreed to do, you likely have nothing to pursue here. Generally maintenance of licensing requirements falls on the individual person licensed, not his/her employer. If the license expired because of something you had to do and that could not have been done by your employer (e.g. continuing education, etc), there is no negligence by the employer and you’d be unable to sue for that. So, to determine whether you might have a good claim here, it matters in what state you are licensed and employed, exactly what caused the licenses to expire, and exactly what, if anything, the employer expressly agreed to do with respect to your licenses.