“Protected activity only needs to implicate ‘a reasonable belief’ that ‘a violation is likely to happen,'” U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley for the District of Massachusetts said. “Given his background and the factual circumstances, Wirth had enough information to sufficiently plead that he reasonably believed a violation of SOX was likely to happen.”
A former Salesforce executive can proceed with a whistleblower retaliation suit as he sufficiently established that he was engaged in protected activity when sounding the alarm about the company’s purported plans to falsely inform the public that its Genie program operated in real time, a federal judge ruled last week.
In a Sept. 13 opinion, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley for the District of Massachusetts denied Salesforce’s motion to dismiss a wrongful termination suit brought by Karl Wirth, Salesforce’s former vice president of product management who co-founded a technology company Evergage. Wirth claims he was fired after raising concerns that Salesforce planned to falsely inform the public about the capabilities of Salesforce’s Customer Data Platform, Genie, at the 2022 Dreamforce conference. The case captioned Karl Wirth v. Salesforce, Inc.
