A district court erroneously analyzed a whistleblower’s wrongful termination complaint using a but-for causation framework, rather than the more generous contributing factor standard under the Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held.
Rather than consider all the evidence to determine whether a reasonable jury could side with the claimant, the district court granted summary judgment to the employer based on its explanation that the claimant was fired for dishonesty, not his protected activity.
Judge Pamela A. Harris said the District Court erred because the claimant’s conduct during the investigation “should be considered not in isolation, but in conjunction with [the claimant’s] evidence of contributing factor causation.”
“We hold only that a reasonable jury could infer from the record, considered as a whole, that something more than Finley’s alleged ‘dishonesty’ on March 24 contributed to his firing by Kraft Heinz, and that Finley’s increasingly urgent food safety complaints — culminating immediately before his termination — ‘affect[ed] his termination in at least some way,’” Harris wrote.
Judge Stephanie D. Thacker, as well as Judge Thomas T. Cullen, sitting by designation from the Western District of Virginia, joined Harris in vacating and remanding Finley v. Kraft Heinz Inc. (VLW 025-2-284).
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