The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration convinced a state appeals court to vacate an auditor’s $425,562 job retaliation verdict over wrongly admitted evidence.
The ruling Wednesday by the California Court of Appeal, Second District, partly cited federal case law in holding that the initial equal employment opportunity complaint Rafi Kourounian filed internally contained hearsay and shouldn’t have been viewed by the jury. There are a number of federal cases holding that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “charges are inadmissible hearsay as is the narrative attached to the charge,” the court said.
That evidence didn’t become non-hearsay just because Kourounian ...