Fired law student sues employer for €100 000

A law student filed 36 lawsuits over four years after being fired from a restaurant without notice. His former employer now owes him €100 000, paid vacation, and an apology.

This is reported by the German online legal magazine Legal Tribune Online.

Sebastian Majidi worked as a part-time waiter in a restaurant in 2021. After taking the first steps towards establishing a works council, he was transferred to the kitchen. When he refused to accept the new position, his employer fired him without warning. At the same time, the restaurant declared bankruptcy and the business was transferred to a new company. The student then expanded his lawsuit to include the director of the bankrupt restaurant personally.

While the case was going on, Majidi graduated from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and received a law degree. In total, the man filed 36 lawsuits against his employer, ranging from damages for lost tips to demands for paid time off for refusing to take work and compensation for washing work clothes.

The Munich Labor Court declared the dismissal unlawful and ruled that the employer had discriminated against the employee both in the dismissal and in his previous treatment. The court found that the transfer to the kitchen and subsequent dismissal were intended solely to prevent the student from forming a works council.

The employer must now compensate the man for all loss of earnings from August 2021. This includes lost tips of €100 per shift, as well as discounts on food and drinks that the student could have consumed after each shift. The employer was also ordered to provide a written apology.

The court found lost tips to be recoverable damages. This position had previously been challenged in the employment law literature. The court also ruled that the director of an insolvent restaurant could be held personally liable.

In addition, the court ordered the employer to provide the plaintiff with six months of paid leave. The reason for this was that the employer had not informed the student of his right to leave.

On his Linkedin page, Majidi wrote that over the course of four years he spent thousands of hours evaluating case law, legal materials, essays, commentaries, and dissertations to bolster his arguments in this strikingly unprecedented case.

“I hope this truly hard-fought outcome will serve as a beacon for others, motivating them to act for fair, transparent working conditions and stand together against exploitation, arbitrary behavior and failed leadership by employers in this country – it’s worth it!” he added.

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