Takeaway: After an employee complains about alleged unlawful conduct by an employer, the employer must proceed cautiously. Even if the employee's complaint is mistaken and the company is innocent of wrongdoing, the law protects the employee from discipline so long as the complaint was reasonable and made in good faith. Nevertheless, this protection will not apply if the employee is disciplined for other reasons, such as harassment of co-workers in the workplace.

Human resources' harassment investigation that occurred long after whistleblowing activity provided a company with a valid defense to a claim that a worker was fired due to whistleblowing when the investigators were unaware of this activity, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided.

The plaintiff was hired by Gateway Health Plan to help Highmark Inc. investigate fraud. While auditing Highmark's network of doctors, the plaintiff found some troubling facts. For instance, he claimed to have discovered that some doctors had prior convictions for selling opioid prescriptions and others lacked required Medicaid licenses.

In mid-2017, the plaintiff reported his concerns to his managers at Gateway. They investigated but decided not to take any action. Yet the plaintiff kept pressing the issue. Eventually, his managers told him to drop it.

More than a year after his first report, on Oct. 1, 2018, the plaintiff's co-worker lodged a harassment complaint against him. In that complaint, the co-worker claimed that the...

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