Fired After Reporting a Work Injury In St. Louis, Missouri

What Missouri Law Says About Workers’ Compensation Retaliation

Missouri is an at-will employment state, meaning an employer can generally fire a worker for any reason or no reason. Workers’ compensation retaliation is a major exception. Under Missouri law, an employer may not discharge or discriminate against an employee for exercising rights under the workers’ compensation statute. Depending on the facts, that can include reporting a work injury, filing a claim, hiring an attorney, or testifying in a comp proceeding.

The statute sets the test. Your exercise of those rights must be the “motivating factor,” which Section 287.780 defines as having “actually played a role in the discharge or discrimination and had a determinative influence” on it.

A retaliation case is also separate from your comp claim. Your workers’ compensation case pays medical and disability benefits for the injury. A retaliation claim is a civil action against the employer that may recover damages for the firing itself, including lost wages. Being fired does not end your comp claim, and pursuing your comp claim does not preclude you from pursuing a retaliation claim. The two run on parallel tracks.

Fired After Reporting an Injury or Going to the ER

Many firings occur before anyone files a claim. A worker tells a supervisor about the injury, or spends a night in the emergency room, and is let go the next day. Section 287.780 does not limit its protection to workers who have filed a claim. It covers exercising “any” rights under the workers’ compensation law.

Reporting the injury is where those rights start. Under Section 287.420, a worker must give the employer written notice of the time, place, and nature of the injury within 30 days of the accident. If you were fired before you gave written notice, give it anyway, and keep a copy. If you are unsure whether you are still within the window, read is it too late to report a work injury in Missouri.

If you went to the ER first, keep the discharge papers and any work note. They show the date, the injury, and what the doctor told you, often before the employer wrote its version of events.

How These Cases Are Actually Proven

Employers rarely announce retaliation. The termination letter will usually cite something else: performance, restructuring, attendance, a policy violation. Missouri courts ask whether your workers’ comp activity was a motivating factor in the employer’s decision, and that is typically shown through circumstantial evidence, such as:

• Timing. Firing someone days or weeks after a claim is filed does not, by itself, prove retaliation, but it provides strong context.
• Comments. Remarks from supervisors about the claim, the injury’s cost, or workers who “milk the system.”
• Shifting explanations. Reasons for the firing that change over time, or that were never raised before the injury.
• Comparisons. Employees with similar records who were not fired, or rules suddenly enforced only against you.
• Your file. Years of good reviews followed by a sudden burst of documentation right after you report the injury.

This is why what you save matters more than what you suspect. Keep the termination letter, write-ups, texts, emails, schedules, performance reviews, and a dated timeline of every event from the date of the injury forward. Write down who said what, and when, while it is fresh.

What To Do Right Now

1. First, keep your workers’ comp claim moving. The firing does not erase your right to medical treatment or disability benefits for the work injury, and abandoning the claim is often exactly what the pressure was designed to accomplish. [New] If the insurer denies the claim after the firing, read how to handle a workers’ compensation claim that has been denied.
2. Second, preserve everything, and stop discussing the situation at work or on social media. Vent to your family, not to Facebook.
3. Third, get legal advice quickly. Retaliation claims have filing deadlines; the comp claim has its own strict deadlines, and the two cases affect each other. How the termination is handled can influence the value of both. An attorney can also evaluate whether what happened supports a retaliation claim, because not every firing after an injury is unlawful, and an honest upfront assessment is worth more than false hope.

How We Answer the Insurer’s Doctors

Insurance company doctors rarely write that a worker needs surgery, future care, or cannot return to work. We respond with orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, pain management physicians, and vocational consultants who don’t work for the insurer. In 2025 alone, this firm spent over $700,000 on expert witnesses.

We also prepare their opinions to withstand testing. Our office has handled roughly 1 in 4 of recent workers’ compensation trials at the St. Louis Division of Workers’ Compensation, where the insurer’s doctors are cross-examined under oath. Insurers know which firms will actually try a case, and it changes what they offer. Every case is different; results depend on the facts.