The law requires that both sides to a lawsuit play fair. When that’s not the case, the side playing fast and loose with the rules gets punished. For a recent prime example, read on.
After Daniel’la Deering was fired from her job as an in-house lawyer for Lockheed Martin, she sued for unlawful retaliation and claimed lost back wages. During her deposition, she testified that she was currently employed but that the pay wasn’t very good. She testified that although she was looking for a better job, it was “exhausting and disheartening to keep applying for jobs and not get anything,” so she had stopped her job search. Guess what? At the time of her deposition, she had already accepted a job elsewhere that paid her a lot more money.
Deering later doubled down on the falsehood when she submitted documents to the court, including her resume, and failed to list this great new employer. The point: Her claimed backpay damages were higher than what she was entitled to because the law requires that compensation earned from new employment be used as an offset against claimed lost wages. In short, the less she earned, the greater the lost wages she could recover. Oops!
Shortly before trial, a litigant lists exhibits to be introduced at trial. One document Deering submitted listed her income in the previous year at $260,866, but her W-2 showed she made nearly twice as much: $452,214. She also submitted to the court the employment contract she signed with the great new—as yet unidentified—employer, with all of its compensation terms.
The lawyers for Lockheed were not asleep at the wheel. They asked the court to dismiss her lawsuit as punishment for her conduct. Request granted.
Deering claimed her lawyers told her to lie. The appeals court cut to the quick: “Although the district court found that her attorneys also committed misconduct by signing [court documents] containing false employment and salary information, it was clear that the dismissal was for her bad-faith conduct, not theirs.”
The appeals court then went on: Deering “was the one, after all, who took an oath to tell the truth during her deposition.” Not to mention that a client is bound by the acts of their lawyers. Oh, and Lockheed was awarded $93,193 in attorneys’ fees for the work needed to uncover the falsehood and seek dismissal. Likely she and the lawyers are jointly responsible for payment. Daniel’la Deering v. Lockheed Martin (8th Cir., September 17, 2024).
This case arose in the upper Midwest. It made me think of the movie Fargo, in which a female police chief tracks down a kidnapper/murderer. In the last scene, he is locked up in the back of her patrol car, and she laments to him, “There is more to life than a little money, you know.” Exactly.
You need to be vigilant in ensuring employees are playing by the rules. By way of example, be sure to write the employee’s lawyer right after a lawsuit is filed and state that their client needs to preserve all social media posts, emails, and text messages because you intend to ask for them in discovery (pretrial exchange of evidence). The lawyer and the client have a duty (as do you) to preserve possible evidence. If they do not, then sanctions involving dismissal are a possibility. The point: More than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to win a lawsuit.
Michael P. Maslanka is a professor at the UNT-Dallas College of Law. You can reach him at michael.maslanka@untdallas.edu.
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