PPG Wins Retaliation Suit Despite Worker-Friendly Proof Standard

Paint company PPG Architectural Finishes Inc. clearly and convincingly showed legitimate reasons for a worker’s firing, meeting a heightened California standard of proof for employers to defeat whistleblower cases, a federal court ruled.

PPG showed that marketing employee Wallen Lawson missed sales goals and scored poorly during management visits to retailers even before he anonymously reported that his supervisor asked him to commit fraud, the US District Court for the Central District of California said Nov. 23.

Judge James V. Selna applied the standard of proof after the California Supreme Court clarified that state labor law, not the US Supreme ...