Plaintiff allegedly experienced retaliation after expressing safety concerns. Plaintiff was then suspended for potentially falsifying time cards and terminated based on the results of an internal investigation. Plaintiff sued. The jury found for Defendant on Plaintiff’s whistleblower retaliation claim, finding Defendant did not take adverse actions against him based on his protected disclosures. However, the jury found for Plaintiff on his defamation claim, finding that an investigator for Defendant published false statements about Plaintiff with malice. Defendant appealed after moving unsuccessfully for JNOV, and plaintiff cross-appealed. 

On appeal, the Court of Appeal reversed the defamation judgment and affirmed the retaliation judgment. Following Lazar v. Superior Court (1996) 12 Cal.4th 631 and Hunter v. Up-Right, Inc. (1993) 6 Cal.4th 1174, the court held that tort claims must arise from conduct separate from the termination and seek damages not solely resulting from the termination. Here, the defamation claim arose from the same report that led to the termination, and Plaintiff did not identify any damages unrelated to his termination, such as reputational damage. Defendant’s conduct did not therefore constitute an actionable tort. Regarding the retaliation claim, the court, citing Estes v. Eaton Corp. (2020) 51 Cal.App.5th 636, found that Plaintiff did not establish he was entitled to prevail as a matter of law. Even if the jury should have found that the termination was an adverse employment action, it did not address whether Plaintiff’s protected disclosures contributed to his termination. The court also found no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s evidentiary rulings.

Full opinion

An Uber driver struck a pedestrian with his vehicle approximately four minutes after going “offline” on the Uber app. The pedestrian sued both the driver and Uber. The trial court granted summary judgment for Defendants, finding no evidence that the driver was acting as an Uber driver at the time of the accident. Plaintiff appealed.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal affirmed. It rejected plaintiff’s argument that a triable issue of fact existed because the driver had not closed the app and frequently toggled between “online” and “offline” modes in order to drive to areas with “surge” pricing. The court found these arguments speculative and held that the driver’s intent to drive later was irrelevant because he was undeniably offline at the time of the accident. The court also rejected Plaintiff’s challenge to the driver’s credibility, finding his misstatements immaterial to the central facts.

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Defendant terminated Plaintiff for cause in 2018, voiding his stock options. Plaintiff sued Defendant for breach of contract, breach of implied covenant, wrongful termination, retaliation, and conversion, alleging he was terminated in retaliation for “asserting his rights to his vested benefits.” The trial court dismissed Plaintiff’s tort claims, ruling that the voided stock options were not “wages,” but a jury found Defendant liable for breach of contract and awarded Plaintiff approximately $11.5 million. The court conditionally granted Defendant’s motions for JNOV and a new trial, contingent on Plaintiff accepting a $4.3 million remittitur. Plaintiff accepted, Defendant appealed, and Plaintiff cross-appealed.

On appeal, the court held that “under both California and Delaware law, damages for lost stock options in a breach of contract action may be measured from a date other than the date of breach based on equitable considerations.” It upheld the trial court’s remittitur, finding the jury verdict excessive. However, the court found the trial court erred in excluding damages for breach of a performance grant and entered a new judgment for $6.7 million.  Finally, the court affirmed dismissal of the tort claims, holding, per International Business Machines Corp. v. Bajorek (9th Cir. 1999) 191 F.3d 1033, 1039, that “stock options are not wages because they ‘are not’ ‘amounts.’”

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