Riley Winter v. TBD, Inc.

## Synopsis

Riley Winter is a ​prominent professional writer. On December 23, 2015, Winter was fired from Winter's job at the defendant's magazine. Winter contends that the termination violated the Midlands Age Discrimination Act.

## Details

This case is described as "a civil case of employment discrimination". It centers around events occurring between January 2014 and December 2015 at the workplace of a pop culture magazine company, TBD Incorporated.

On January 2nd, 2014, CEO Sawyer Shaw took over the company and made several drastic changes, most notably firing the editor-in-chief and almost every writer over the age of 40. By that summer, senior writer Riley Winter, who'd been at TBD since July 1988, was the only writer remaining on staff from that age group. Over the next couple years, Winter purported to adjust to the new company standards under Shaw, although Winter's annual performance evaluations contained mixed messages in that regard. Winter was also subject to many jokes and remarks making fun of Winter's age during this time, notably at Winter's 50th birthday party on November 20th, 2015. In December of that year, Winter wrote an article citing several obscure Twitter tweets as TBD's "Top 10 Tweets of 2015," which was never published, and another article harshly criticizing the music streaming service TURNTable, one of the biggest sponsors of TBD and whose CEO Adrian Edwards was good friends with Shaw. The latter article was approved by editor-in-chief Austin Perez, sent to press and, as far as anyone knows, is still on the TBD website. Not long after, on December 23rd, Winter received a termination letter at the age of 50 years old, with no reason given for the firing. Around the same time a 26-year-old Landon Greene was hired to the position of "lead writer", and is allegedly of all the same protected classes as Winter but for age.

Beginning in January 2016, Winter began seeing a psychologist for post-traumatic stress disorder (as a result of the firing) at the same time that Winter began the paperwork for filing this lawsuit. Winter's argument has been that Winter met and exceeded job expectations, and had no reason to be fired but for Winter's age, which violates the Midlands Age Discrimination Act. Meanwhile TBD Inc., represented by Shaw, has argued that the termination was due to performance that was out of touch with modern popular culture as well as writing a damaging article about TURNTable; the company also purports that they aren't legally required to provide an explanation upon firing employees.

## Witnesses

### Plaintiff

* Riley Winter
* Austin Perez
* Bobbie Lin
* Dr. Sam Owens
* Dr. Cary Kramer

### Defense

* Sawyer Shaw
* Adrian Edwards
* Skye Martin
* Kirby Doolittle
* Dr. Vic Fogel

## Other Persons of Interest

* Francis Leo
* Landon Greene
* Taylor Erick
* Ainsley Mayes

## Other Case References

* TBD's 50th Anniversary Party was going to be held in Miller Tower. This is the same building where the events of State v. Thornhill take place.
* A witness from MTS v. Kosack, Harper Villafana, used to work at TBD before the Riley Winter lawsuit.

## Trivia

* This case allows the option of either being bifurcated (and not pursuing financial compensation until liability is established) or not being bifurcated (and thus pursuing both liability and damages in the same trial). The psychologist Cary Kramer must be called if the plaintiff decides on the latter, and may not be called if the former.
* In Kissner v. Polk Hospital, there's a witness named Francis Leo, the same name as the former chief editor of TBD in this case. However, they're a different Francis Leo from the person in this case, because that Francis Leo was 28 years old in 2005, while the Francis Leo in this case is 57 years old in 2014. Their ages don't even remotely match up, meaning they're different people.