Comments on: “Former employee wins $4.1 billion”

By: Connecticut Employment Law Blog

Connecticut Employment Law Blog — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:57:57 +0000

Employee Awarded $4.1 Billion in Wrongful Termination/Breach of Contract Arbitration (And No, That is Not a Typo)…

In case you missed it, a California court recently upheld a $4.1 billion aribration award to a former executive who brought a wrongful termination suit against his former employer. (The National Law Journal has a good analysis today of what……

By: Ted

Ted — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:28:03 +0000

I’m waiting for the trial lawyers to explain to us why arbitration is unfair to employees, and that this particular plaintiff was really entitled to twice as much.

By: Bob Lipton

Bob Lipton — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:13:22 +0000

Why would it fail to qualify? I’m just waiting for my award of ten quadrillion dollars. And then I’m going to flap my arms and fly to the moon.

Bob

By: Commentor

Commentor — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:41:20 +0000

Under the FAA, one way you can challenge a normally unassailable arbitration award is over miscalculations apparent on the face of the award. Anybody think this might qualify?

By: Soronel Haetir

Soronel Haetir — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:40:44 +0000

Talk about bet the company litigation.

By: jkoerner

jkoerner — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:57:49 +0000

Interesting. The defendants were unhelpful in discovery, so the base amount for the award came from a single month’s sale figure of $535K with the understanding that sales had grown between 10% and 20% per month in 2005. The arbitrator then compounded it forward assuming 10% growth per month for 7 more years (until 2012). This is an amazing growth rate that has the arbitrator assuming approximately $1.9 billion in revenue a month in 2012 or $23 billion a year. For comparison, this is more than Oracle had in revenue last year. Of course, the actual damages were also trebled for punitive damages (for a breach of K?), but I guess that is Cali law.

Comparing this arbiter’s calculations to practical economics, I have a feeling this is going to be a hard judgment to collect outside of fantasy land.