Severance Agreement Releases in New York City and Cleveland, Ohio

Hi, my name is Alex Granovsky and I am the Managing Member of Granovsky & Sundaresh. We’re an employment law firm with offices in New York and Ohio, and we specialize, in particular, in severance agreements. In a series of videos, what I’m going to do is describe some of the typical component parts of separation agreements that we see and what that component part means.

The best place to start is the release – the release is, in large part, what your employer is paying you for to sign the severance. A release is your promise not to sue your now former employer for pretty much anything from the day you signed the release back. These paragraphs typically start out with some sort of language like you hereby forever and completely release and discharge – the company, its officers, directors, and everybody else in this world.

Again, the whole point of a release from the company’s perspective is it ensures that pretty much from the day you signed this thing backwards, because releases are only backwards looking, you can’t sue the company or people affiliated with the company for anything related to your employment.

So what’s the upshot of that? The upshot is when you’re given a severance, it’s supremely important to consider what rights you are giving up in exchange for signing it, because you are most certainly giving up the fundamental right to sue your now former employer and you might be giving up rights that you don’t even know about.

Oftentimes we have folks who call us to evaluate their employment situation and they think that their employment was illegally terminated for reason X, when in fact they weren’t paid correctly or there was an equal pay violation or some other matter. In any event, when you signed these separation agreements, you give up your right to sue for many of these very important rights. So it’s critical to have your agreement reviewed by qualified attorney who specializes in severance. I hope that helps. Thanks for watching.