When Employers Sue Ex-Employees for Millions: A Guide to Fighting SLAPP Claims

Former employees in Israel are increasingly finding that after resigning, they receive multimillion-shekel lawsuits instead of a farewell letter. The article says some ex-employers use these claims to deter workers from exercising their freedom of occupation, a tactic known internationally as a SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation. The issue has received growing attention in Israeli case law, especially after the Supreme Court ruling in RA 1954/24 Vaknin v. Kibbutz Nir David, issued on January 7, 2025.

The piece explains that a SLAPP in labor law is filed by a better-resourced party, usually an employer, not to obtain a legitimate remedy but to intimidate, exhaust financially, and silence a worker. In these cases, former employers often demand inflated sums and accuse employees of stealing trade secrets or acting in conspiracy, even when there is little real evidence, sending a chilling message to other workers.

As an example, the article points to a case now being heard at the Tel Aviv-Yafo Regional Labor Court, case number 67648-11-25. O.G.I. Marketing and Distribution Ltd. and Unico New Retail Ltd., both active in electrical goods marketing, sued three former employees for a total of 3 million shekels on allegations of trade secret theft, breach of trust, and conspiracy. The defendants were rank-and-file workers, including two sales agents, who say they resigned after a period of organizational pressure and later joined unrelated employers. They are represented by attorneys Mor Lusky-Yasur and Amir Idan.

According to the article, the lawsuit backfired: once the employees were sued, they filed counterclaims seeking unpaid rights they say were denied during their years of work, including overtime pay, pension contributions, sales commissions, and severance pay. The original claim thus became a double-edged sword for the plaintiffs.

The article says Vaknin established that one of the main responses to SLAPP suits is to impose especially heavy legal costs on the silencing plaintiff, sometimes equal to the amount claimed, to discourage abuse of court proceedings. Labor courts have begun applying that approach against employers who file exaggerated claims against former employees, and the article concludes that strong legal representation can both defeat inflated lawsuits and help workers recover long-ignored rights.