Big Win for Whistleblowers in U.S. Court Of Appeals for The Fourth Circuit
From my inbox- good news is worth sharing:
Washington, D. C. May 24, 2016. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of a corporate whistleblower in a May 20, 2016 decision. The case, filed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by Mrs. Dinah R. Gunther, alleged that the Virginia-based software provider, Deltek, Inc. fired her after she raised accounting concerns to the company’s General Counsel, Audit Committee and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The U.S. Department of Labor originally reviewed the claim and ruled in Mrs. Gunther’s favor, ordering the company to pay substantial damages, including back pay with benefits and four years of front pay. The company filed various appeals. Mrs. Gunther represented herself as a pro se complainant throughout the administrative trial and the initial administrative appeal. She was assisted by her non-lawyer husband.
In ruling for Mrs. Gunther, the Court determined that she was “entitled to be returned to the identical financial position she would have occupied had she not been terminated unlawfully for protected whistleblowing.”The Court also made important findings upholding the Department of Labor’s rulings on removal of company documents and surreptitious tape recording in the context of a whistleblower case. The Court noted that “Gunther’s effort to protect selected relevant documents from what she reasonably believed was a risk of destruction” was reasonable.
Stephen M. Kohn who argued before the Court of Appeals on behalf of Mrs. Gunther stated: “This is a great day for whistleblowers. Employees who risk their jobs to report wrongdoing must be assured that they will not suffer financial retribution.”
Mrs. Gunther is a hero. With the support of her husband and her family, she stood up to a corporate giant, and vindicated her right to disclose potential violations of law. She has fought this case since her illegal termination on October 27, 2009. A long and painful journey,” Kohn added.
The whistleblower, Dinah Gunther, said: “This has been both the simplest and most difficult journey I’ve made. Simple because I believe I did the right thing by reporting potential wrongdoing; difficult because Deltek mounted forceful defenses that took a toll on my career and family. I am grateful that the trial Judge ultimately found Deltek’s defenses lacked merit.” Mrs. Gunther added “I think of King David, who as a shepherd boy faced Goliath, a giant who in every measure - save one - had the advantage over David. What David had over Goliath was unshakeable faith. Standing on faith, David stopped Goliath with a simple smooth stone. Throughout this process, my faith never wavered, and today I feel like I am the stone that stopped the giant.”
Good triumphed over evil this week. Good to know.
Related links:
The Fourth Circuit's Decision
ALJ Decision affirmed by the Court of Appeals
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Mary Jane Wilmoth
National Whistleblower Center
P.O. Box 25074
Washington, D.C. 2002
(202) 342-1902
mjw@whistleblowers.org
http://www.whistleblowers.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Comments
Hot damn.
The pendulum is swinging, and Hillary better turn around before it hits her on the back even before it gets to mid stage.
Everything has a rhythm. Everything. This flat earth (and the turtle pulling sun which goes around us) is not in some static position. It is FLYING through the galaxy we named after a sugar laden candy bar. But even its orbit has a pendulum to it. It bounces up and down, in a gorgeous sine wave, with the peak around every 20,000 years.
In politics, the Reich-ward creep our country has endured since Bill Clinton's presiduncy, is starting the move back to center, and then to the left. In that way, a "Bernie" was bound to happen. I am just glad that the curmudgeon who decided to act was of such high moral and ethical standing. A Weiner, or a McAulife, or a Rahm, as the "liberal" or "progressive" candidate would do more harm than good. Much like a Hillary.
It is not just politics. Or an appellate court realizing that enough was enough. It hits other programs and professions, as well.
For example, in Law, Justice Posner has been the "go to" dude on employment law and economics. His 7th Circuit court of Appeals has done more damage and injury to powerless workers than any other court in the country. Yet, even he has sat back and realized with horror what he had done. He gave a speach last year, in which he said something like, "Corporations have too much power, and employees are too powerless. Many of my opinions contributed to this. I will work to change that."
Posner is a notable and important example. Read any one of his books. They have incredible and important ideas, they are well written, and they inform, even if you disagreed with his older results. But, being a very smart man, he can (and did) recognize his own mistakes, and do something about it.
This decision is simply more evidence of the swing back in law and politics.
It's about damn time
Thank you for your comment.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
I argued before Posner
on an employment law issue. 54 yo woman terminated after complaining about being denied time off for Yom Kippur.
Posner asked me why the damages shouldn't be limited to the day off she didn't get, since that is what she would be risking by taking it off without permission.
I replied that she was also risking her job, and that at her age it would probably be the last she could get (which it was).
Posner ruled against me. She didn't get a dime.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
I love his many books.
But I love even more his epiphany he reported on in public.
Great news--but it could be better
That great, transparent, progressive president has been the harshest punisher of Federal whistle blowers in the modern (i.e., electronic media) age. Several are serving prison terms, such as a CIA officer who publicized torture methods at U.S. detention facilities. It would be a matter of honor and pride to release those wrongfully imprisoned for doing their duty, informing the public about governmental misdeeds, and to be appropriately compensated for having their lives ruined.
Pro Se Analyst Beats Corporate Giant and their Mega Law Firm
I am an eyewitness to this case from the very beginning. Without a trial lawyer, Dinah prosecuted her case and secured a judgment against Deltek even though she was opposed by well-experienced and well-funded litigators from the law firm DLA Piper. When Dinah first came forward with her concerns, the only thing she expected from Deltek was for the company to address the systemic issues she believed she and a second whistleblower (Chris Reynolds) discovered. In my view, Deltek should have thanked Dinah for raising those concerns. Instead, they circled the wagons and punished her, forcing Dinah to seek a legal resolution. Fortunately, whistleblower protections in the SOX legislation have helped to level the playing field between very powerful publicly traded corporations and good faith whistleblowers like Dinah. These employee protections serve an important purpose and must never be repealed. In fact, this landmark legislation must be strengthened so that employers are not able to rely on virtually unlimited shareholder resources to wage retaliation and discrimination against whistleblowers who are acting in the shareholders’ interest. The decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals in this matter will certainly disappoint the labor law defense Bar and cause it to ask: what was DLA Piper thinking by taking this case all the way to the 4th Circuit?” I am thankful that the trial Judge, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Administrative Review Board and the majority on the U.S. Court of Appeals panel took the time to carefully review the record evidence and found in Dinah’s favor. I am especially grateful that Mr. Kohn represented Dinah so superbly before the U.S. Court of Appeals and helped her finally find the complete vindication she so deserves. J. Gunther
I hope your very thoughtful observations
are being published somewhere.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member