Attorney Sent Letter for Former Employee
This is in Oregon, and is an "at-will" state.
I run a small business and have never received a letter like this so I'm not sure what to do. The letter itself came by regular mail and was sent to my house. The grammar of the letter is strange/ wrong, and the total of the damages doesn't add up correctly. The only real request I can see is ORS 652.750, which I can easily send. I'm just not sure if I should even engage with this attorney considering the other errors.
The employee #1 asking for damages worked directly with employee #2, and they had equal management positions. They also had a history of drinking together while employed.
A few months ago it seems hurtful things were said during a night of drinking and employee #1 made it their goal to get #2 fired. After the bad night drinking Employee #1 had actually asked to be removed from shifts to avoid employee #2, so there was no retaliatory taking away of shifts.
I did investigate the claims employee #1 made when it was reported to me, and that was about 2 weeks after the bad night drinking. Other employees denied the misbehavior of employee #2. I had a few separate talks with employee #1 and #2 about professionalism, moving on and working together without drama. I felt the matter was delt with, but employee #1 kept saying that if they get fired it's because they brought up all the scandalous behavior of employee #2
Although it did come out that employee #1 was drinking on the job and it was affecting other employees. About 2 months after the initial incident, another employee complained about employee #1 drinking on the job. I checked the security camera and employee #1 clearly pours themself multiple drinks from a liquor bottle, so I terminated them the next day. That was over 60 days ago now.
There are other owners in the company and they feel we should just ignore this. We're not a big business so even small lawyer fees will be a burden.