GET A FREE CONSULTATION
310-750-4149
By David Gammill, trial counsel in this case · Last reviewed: September 10, 2026
When two employees reported what they believed was illegal activity inside a California company, the company did not just fire them. It sued them. Seven years later, after a three-week jury trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a jury answered every question on the verdict form in the employees’ favor: $6,190,126 in damages, a finding by clear and convincing evidence that both the company and one of its executives acted with malice, oppression, or fraud, and zero on the company’s lawsuit against them. Before the punitive damages phase could be tried, the case resolved by confidential settlement. This is the story of how that case was built and tried. Every case is different, and no past result guarantees any future outcome.
Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a future outcome. If you were punished for reporting wrongdoing at work, call Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers at (310) 750-4149 for a free, confidential consultation.
This case started the way most of these cases start: employees saw something at work they believed was illegal, and they said so. The two had worked at the company about a year. They did not go to the press. They reported it the way California law contemplates, inside the company, to people with the authority to do something about it.
California Labor Code section 1102.5 prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee for reporting information the employee has reasonable cause to believe shows a violation of the law, whether the report goes to a government agency, to a supervisor, or to another employee with authority to investigate it. The protection applies whether or not reporting is part of the person’s job. A firing that punishes a protected report is a wrongful termination, no matter what reason appears in the personnel file.
The report was made on April 24. By May 5, the company had decided the two would be terminated.
No company announces that it is firing someone for speaking up. There is no memo that says so. What a jury can see is the sequence, and here the sequence was eleven days. Timelines matter. That arithmetic sat at the center of the case from the first day of trial to the last.
The company denied everything. Then it went further: it filed a cross-complaint against the two people who had reported it. That decision changed the stakes of the entire case. The plaintiffs were no longer just pursuing their claims; they were defendants in their former employer’s lawsuit. Losing would not have meant walking away with nothing. It could have meant owing money to the company that fired them.
They did not fold. The lawsuits were filed in 2017. The company litigated for seven years before a jury ever heard the evidence.
Some of the most important evidence in this case was evidence the jury never saw. Email accounts that would have held key communications had been deleted, and the court instructed the jury that if it found evidence had been willfully suppressed, it could conclude that evidence would have been unfavorable to the party that suppressed it. The pattern ran deeper than email. Everybody has text messages; the defense produced almost none of its own. Our case did not depend on what was missing. The jury was entitled to weigh it anyway, and the law told them so.
The defense came to trial holding what it plainly considered its best evidence: a recording of the plaintiffs, offered to destroy their credibility. The defense told the jury there was nothing improper about it, that it was made openly, in plain sight, with permission.
We did not fight to keep that recording out. We stipulated it into evidence.
At trial, the recording itself gave the truth away. Examined moment by moment, timestamp by timestamp, it carried the unmistakable signature of a concealed device, and the account of an open, permitted recording came apart in front of the jury. By the close of evidence, the defense’s centerpiece exhibit had changed sides: a recording offered to undermine two fired employees had become the plaintiffs’ proof of how they were actually treated. And when the lawyers argued housekeeping before deliberations, it was the plaintiffs who asked the court to make sure the jurors knew they could listen to the full recording at their leisure. The defense preferred to wait and see. When the side that brought the evidence no longer wants the jury spending time with it, that tells you how the trial went.
The trial ran three weeks in Los Angeles Superior Court. Witness by witness, document by document, two directly conflicting accounts of why these employees lost their jobs went to a jury. The rebuttal argument put the jury’s whole job into one question, repeated until it became the credibility test for everything the defense had said: which is which, and who is who.
Closing arguments finished on September 25, 2024. The next day, the jury came back. Every question on the special verdict form, the liability questions, the damages questions, the punitive damages questions, and the company’s cross-complaint, was answered in the plaintiffs’ favor. Every one.
As we put it in closing argument: “They don’t get a discount because they waited to be forced to do the right thing.”
Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
The trial was structured in two phases. Phase one decided liability, compensatory damages, and whether punitive damages were available. Phase two, in front of the same jury that had just answered every question against the defendants, would have decided how much. It was set to begin the following week.
Phase two was never tried. After the verdict, and before the punitive damages phase began, the case resolved by confidential settlement. The terms are confidential, and they will stay that way.
David Gammill served seven years as a Deputy District Attorney before representing plaintiffs. A prosecutor proves cases under the highest burden the law imposes: beyond a reasonable doubt. He has tried over 100 cases to verdict. If you reported wrongdoing at work and paid for it with your job, get your free case evaluation or call (310) 750-4149. There are no upfront legal fees; a fee is collected only if we win, under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law.
Disclaimer: This page describes a specific case tried to a Phase 1 jury verdict in September 2024 and subsequently resolved by confidential settlement. Its facts, parties, and circumstances are unique, and the result does not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction regarding the outcome of any other matter. Details are drawn from the public trial record; party names are omitted. This page is attorney advertising.
