Terminated for cause State Farm

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Hey guys, I was a State Farm agent team member in the Midwest for 6 yrs and my appointment was recently “terminated for cause” back in April 2020. I was a top sales, usually #1 or #2 guy and team member hall of fame for 5 of those 6 yrs. The agency was audited and it looks like I pulled a lot of MVRs/consumer reports from my yrs there, especially when you can continuously pull MVRs/CRs pre 2017. Post 2017 they only let you pull twice per quote, unless you just remade another quote. I was top sales because usually when I quote one person in the house, I was able to get permission and referral to quote everyone else who lives there, which was great. And of course being top sales I had a very high MVR/CR pull count compared to average sales team member. I am the only sales person in the office I worked at. I am Asian, and most of my customers were Asian/Mexican/somoli, and usually with these groups of people, multigenerational families all live together in one house, and they have lots of kids. So this explains the massive MVR/CR pulls, but I’ve always had permission first before I quote any person in the house. I sold so much because this was my demographic, so if I sold one person, the whole house wanted in on deals at State Farm. So I explained everything to the auditor and State Farm, and they terminated me and didn’t even give me the specific details or written form for why they concluded to this. Worse is that it’s termination for cause which will potentially affect me if I want to go independent or with any other carrier. I didn’t do anything wrong, but to them they assumed the data proves that i may have pulled MVRs/CRs without permission. Correlation does not prove causation. I wasn’t reported by any customers at all either. There was no proof that I was improperly doing it, the data just suggests it’s out of the ordinary. I worked so hard for this company and followed all the rules and regulations, never forged signatures, or do any weird shenanigans to customers, and this is the biggest slap the face ever. I feel like this is also a discrimination case since my demographic and what I market to are people of color with multigenerational families that live in one house. One of the main factors State Farm is auditing is because they are in deep crap with the feds atm for improperly training agents and agent team members for pulling bank loans without consent. But I never sold any bank, never touched it because the rates weren’t that great for my demographic.

My question now is 2 things:
Do I need to lawyer up for the wrongful termination for cause?

also, did this happen to any of you other State Farm people out there? Because if so, I think we need to band together on this and make this a class action lawsuit.
 
Lmk what else I can do in this situation or if I can somehow dispute this termination for cause. Because I have a letter that has been sent to me to provide an explanation for it to the commissioner in my state.
 
I was top sales because usually when I quote one person in the house, I was able to get permission and referral to quote everyone else who lives there, which was great. And of course being top sales I had a very high MVR/CR pull count compared to average sales team member. I am the only sales person in the office I worked at. I am Asian, and most of my customers were Asian/Mexican/somoli, and usually with these groups of people, multigenerational families all live together in one house, and they have lots of kids. So this explains the massive MVR/CR pulls, but I’ve always had permission first before I quote any person in the house.

Did you talk to each individual person? Or just get a collective authority/approval from the one person you originally talked to?


So I explained everything to the auditor and State Farm, and they terminated me and didn’t even give me the specific details or written form for why they concluded to this. Worse is that it’s termination for cause which will potentially affect me if I want to go independent or with any other carrier.

Did you contact State Farm HR? Start there. A termination for cause should be documented and even a letter sent out (I believe). You may even need to let HR know that you are considering getting an attorney because you believe you were terminated unjustly.

My question now is 2 things:
Do I need to lawyer up for the wrongful termination for cause?

Yes. Find a good labor law attorney.
 
I am a newbie to this industry but have 30 years experience in business as an entrepreneur. If this were me I would spend a few hundred with an attorney to get more information on dealing with the commissioner and the agency you worked for. Your career is too important to take any chances. There must be attorneys that specialize somewhat in the insurance industry.

Thank you for bringing this up because I did not know this could become a problem.
 
I was a State Farm agent team member in the Midwest for 6 yrs and my appointment was recently “terminated for cause” back in April 2020.

Were you a W-2 employee or a 1099 independent contractor?

Either way, what does your contract say about termination for cause? Quote it word for word or upload the page.

Waiting a year and a half to address potential litigation is not in your favor.

Did you get written consent from each person for the MVR and credit report? If not, I don't think you have anywhere to go with this.
 
To be clear, you were employed by the local agent/agency, correct? If you were not employed by State Farm, they cant terminate you. They likely told the agent he would be terminated based on the findings of the auditor that you had either caused them to incur excessive fees for running MVR/credit based reports or that you didn’t obtain permission from the direct party you were running the reports on.
 
Did you talk to each individual person? Or just get a collective authority/approval from the one person you originally talked to?

Talked to every person to get permission




Did you contact State Farm HR? Start there. A termination for cause should be documented and even a letter sent out (I believe). You may even need to let HR know that you are considering getting an attorney because you believe you were terminated unjustly.



Yes. Find a good labor law attorney.
 
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