New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog

Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the whistleblower protection of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act applies not only to employees of publicly traded companies, but also to employees of privately held companies who perform work for the publicly traded company as contractors or subcontractors.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act is a 2002 law that was passed in 2002 in response to the collapse of Enron Corporation.  It includes an anti-retaliation provision that prohibits public companies, as well as their employees and agents from firing, harassing, demoting, suspending, or otherwise discriminating against employees who blow the whistle on certain activities prohibited by the Act.

The case, Lawson v. FMR LLC, involves the Fidelity family of mutual funds, which has no employees of its own.  The whistleblowers were Jonathan M. Zang and Jackie Hosang Lawson, both of whom were employed by different subsidiaries of the same parent company, FMR LLC.  Their employers are private companies that manage and advise the Fidelity family of mutual funds.

To prevail in a retaliation lawsuit you have to prove your employer took an adverse action (such as demoting or firing you) because you engaged in a legally-protected activity. For example, if your employer fired you after you complained you were not being properly paid for working overtime you would have to prove there was a connection between your complaint and the company’s decision to fire you. This is called a “causal link.”

There are many different ways to prove a causal link in a retaliation case. Some of the most common ways include evidence your employer fired you quickly after you objected, a decision-maker was angry about your objection, or the company’s explanation for firing you is false. A recent New Jersey case, Goldsmid v. Lee Rain, Inc., finds another potential way to prove retaliation: Based on evidence the employer had someone ready to replace you very quickly after it fired you.

Craig Goldsmid worked for Lee Rain, Inc. in Vineland, New Jersey, most recently in the company’s warehouse. Although Lee Rain initially paid him by the hour, in early 2010 it began paying him a salary.

Last week, New Jersey’s Appellate Division revisited the question of whether an employee who blows the whistle about an activity related to his job duties can be protected by New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA). This time, the court concluded the employee can proceed with his claim even though he blew the whistle about an issue related to his job.

There is a split in legal authority over this issue. As I discussed in a previous article, New Jersey’s Whistleblower Law Protects “Watchdog” Employees Whose Jobs Require Them to Report Violations of Law, last September another panel of the Appellate Division ruled an employee whose job is focused on corporate safety or compliance issues is protected by CEPA only if he (1) “pursued and exhausted all internal means of securing compliance” or (2) “refused to participate in the objectionable conduct.” In contrast, several previous cases have ruled that employees who object about violations of the law in the course of performing their jobs are not protected by CEPA.

The latest case to address this issue is Dukin v. Mount Olive Township Board of Education. Robert Dukin worked for the Mount Olive Township Board of Education as an auto-mechanic. In early January 2010, he told his supervisor about a number of safety concerns about a particular school bus. The next time Mr. Dukin was at work, he saw a bus driver preparing to drive the unsafe bus. After confirming the bus had not been repaired, Mr. Dukin told the bus driver not to drive it. He then reported this to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s on-site inspector, who directed Mount Olive to take the bus out of service.