A whistleblower who accused Wells Fargo & Co. of conducting sham interviews with minority job candidates will now be able to sue the bank over his firing.
Wells Fargo lost a bid to place the former employee’s wrongful-termination complaint into secret arbitration proceedings. That means Joe Bruno will have the chance to take to open court his claims that his firing was retaliatory, and potentially present new details about the interviews.
Bruno was the first person to publicly claim in 2022 that Wells Fargo had been interviewing minority candidates for positions that had already been filled so executives could say they were making concrete efforts to diversify the bank’s workforce. His revelations led the US Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into whether the bank had violated civil-rights laws. Wells Fargo shareholders sued over the resulting drop in the bank’s stock price and won class-action status before reaching an $85 million settlement last month.
Wells Fargo has said that the fake interviews weren’t widespread, if they happened at all. In a February 2024 filing with regulators, it said the Justice Department had closed its investigation. Bruno, the bank claimed in a disclosure that’s visible to other banks considering hiring him, was fired for “workplace conduct inconsistent with company standards.” Bank officials claimed he had mistreated another employee.
“Mr. Bruno’s allegations are baseless,” Dana Ripley, a Wells Fargo spokesman, said...
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