Executive Advances Suit on Firing for Covid-19 Exposure Texts

A former sales executive at steel fabricator Selco Manufacturing Corp. can take his state-law retaliation allegations to trial over losing his job in 2021 after confronting the CEO by text for coming to work with Covid-19 symptoms.

A reasonable factfinder could determine that the worker thought his boss had violated a state-level executive order on protecting employees during the pandemic’s first year, which supports his retaliation claim under a whistleblower law, the US District Court for the District of New Jersey said. There are too many disputed facts for either side to get a pretrial win on retaliation, the ...