PHOENIX (CN) — The Ninth Circuit declined to vacate a sanction order against a whistleblower who claimed TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, stole content and shared data with the Chinese Communist Party.
A lower court dismissed Yintao Yu’s 2023 wrongful termination lawsuit after finding he fabricated evidence and lied under oath, sanctioning and ordering him to abide by the contracts he says he never signed and enter arbitration over his termination.
In an unpublished memorandum posted Thursday, a Ninth Circuit panel dismissed Yu’s appeal.
“Plaintiff rendered his appeal moot by initiating and proceeding with arbitration, for example, by working to select an arbitrator and participating in an ongoing arbitration proceeding for over a year,” the panel wrote. “As a result of plaintiff’s actions, we would be unable to grant any effectual relief to plaintiff, should he prevail on appeal.”
ByteDance claims Yu signed four different agreements that required he go through arbitration to challenge adverse employment actions. Yu said his signatures on those documents were forged and offered an anonymous witness declaration claiming to have witnessed Yu sign a key document that would have aided his claim.
At an evidentiary hearing in October 2024, it was revealed that the anonymous witness never saw the declaration attributed to her name and never witnessed Yu sign any documents. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston dismissed the claims and sanctioned Yu in December 2024.
“That dispute...
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