The termination timeline that survives summary judgment
Causation in a retaliation case lives or dies on sequence. Here is what belongs in the timeline, and the two entries firms most often leave out.
In a retaliation case, the timeline is the argument. Protected activity, then adverse action, close enough in time that a jury can infer a connection — and no intervening legitimate reason that explains the gap. Every part of that is a date.
What belongs in it
- Hire date, position, rate of pay, and who the supervisor was
- Every performance review, with the rating
- Every complaint the employee made — to HR, to a supervisor, in writing or verbally, internally or to an agency
- Every disciplinary action, formal or informal, including verbal warnings noted in a file
- Every leave request and every accommodation request, with the response
- Any change in supervisor, department, shift or duties
- The separation itself, with the reason given at the time
The two that get left out
First: the disciplinary history before the protected activity. Firms building a retaliation timeline tend to start at the complaint, because that is where the story starts. But the absence of discipline in the preceding period is often the strongest single fact in the case — four years without a write-up, then three in six weeks. You cannot make that argument if the timeline begins at the complaint.
Second: what happened to comparators. If two other employees had similar attendance records in the same period and were not terminated, that belongs on the timeline as an entry, not in a separate memo you write later.
Conflicting dates are evidence
When the separation letter says 30 June and the final paystub covers through 7 July, that is not a clerical problem to tidy up. It may be nothing. It may also be the difference between a termination decided before and after the complaint. Show both dates and note the conflict.
The instinct to produce a clean timeline works against you here. Clean means somebody chose, and if you chose without noticing, you may have chosen wrong.
Cite everything
Every entry should carry the document and page. Partly because you will need it at deposition, and partly because the discipline of citing forces you to notice which entries came from the client rather than the record. Those are the ones that need corroboration before you rely on them.