Denied Unemployment Due to False Claim of Disparaging Emplloyer

[chyvan]

You can try that approach, but I'd just go with the video.

It's supposed to be about why they let you go when they did, not all the reasons they can think of from when they let you go until the day of the hearing.

By the time of the hearing, that list of three things is going to grow. It's like trying to shoot a moving target.

[MRSD]

That list of things is what they submitted before the initial denial. So those things are the things I am focused on, obviously anything they bring up afterwards I will just say "Why didn't you say that during the phone interview and are just bringing it up now"

[MRSD]

Well, just had the hearing, I feel pretty good about it, I'd say 75/25 in my favor. I'm sure when people come out of these things they are full of self-doubt so maybe I'm being more of a skeptic than I should, my witness who was a former employee who was probably a little more objective than me seems to think I'm a shoe-in, but, we will wait for the judge to hopefully agree with him.

So, thanks for all the advice, what I ended up doing was preparing a list of evidence I had, with a 2-3 sentence summary on each piece and then let the judge decide what was relevant. Some of you guys were both right and wrong.

The video evidence she said, was relevant, but not as much as I was thinking, and likewise, my witness, a former employee, I think was the biggest asset. He was able to testify that, yeah we were all on Facebook or other websites, including the manager, and likewise it was only during the breaks. And that this appeared to be okay with the manager and owner as they were on websites too. He also had something with him where the owners told him he should be more like me as an employee. The judge was pretty quick to shut down anything that was irrelevant, so I was surprised when she wanted to hear about my witness and, not how or why he was terminated, but was more interested in how the former employer lied to UI in that case.

I think in the beginner though, when the employer had the opening statement, the judge kept pressing him why he fired me that day, and he said "because we hired a new guy", and she was like "there must have been something, some triggering event" and he was like "well it was from the warning we gave him two months prior to that". I kind of think no matter what the cause for termination really, once that was said, it was kind of game over. I don't know though, I'm not the expert, I'll let you all know in a week.

Everything else was irrelevant though

For what its worth, I tried to present my best foot in the hearing, showed up shirt/tie, answer every question your honor or yes ma'am.
The former employer showed up in t-shirt/jeans and was 15 minutes late for the hearing.

Something that I read, that I think is very sound advice. ALWAYS GIVE A CLOSING STATEMENT, SUM EVERYTHING UP, AND REITERATE ANY WEAKNESSES IN THEIR CASE.

They choose to not say anything, I just simply said "Your honor, I came into work that Friday fully expecting to come into work the next Monday, by their own admission they didn't really have a reason for letting me go that day. Had I know I was doing something so grievous as to jeopardize my job, I wouldn't have done it"

By the way, chyvan, I think you're right about CA trying to skimp on UI benefits, I can't explain it but the whole time I felt like I was having to prove my innocence rather than them prove my guilt.

I'm not sure if this is procedurally allowed, but their opening statement, the owner pretty much went in circles and got in a tiff with the judge. She kept asking him what happen the day of my termination to cause me to get fired, and he said nothing, then she said "Sir, there has to be something, a triggering event, to causes his termination" He said 'Well, we hired a new guy" and she said, "Sir, that's not a reason to deny UI benefits" this went back and forth like 4-5 times before he said "Well, we caught him on facebook a week before"

I didn't say it of course, but was I was thinking is the judge allowed to ask a question 5-6 times till the guy gets the "right answer"

The other thing too was, our hearing was scheduled at 11am, they didn't show up when we got called in at 11:10'ish, we were about 5-8 mins into the hearing, when they showed up at 11:20am. I wanted ask "how is this allowed that they can just show up whenever they want?"