Opinion ID: 2713093
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: shallal

Text: In Shallal, this Court reviewed the requirements of the WPA in a case in which the plaintiff, Janette Shallal, attempted to use the WPA as an extortionate tool in order to frustrate her employer’s decision to terminate her for poor performance and misconduct. Shallal was employed as an adoption department supervisor for Christian Social Services (CSS), a nonprofit social service agency that provided adoption services. During her employment, Thomas Quinn was appointed as president of the agency. Approximately one year after Quinn’s appointment, Shallal learned of allegations that Quinn had been drinking on the job and misusing the agency’s funds. While Shallal discussed these 20 Sun Valley, 460 Mich at 236. 10 allegations with various coworkers, at no time did she report Quinn’s violations to the board of directors or to any other responsible body. Shallal’s termination was precipitated by her inadequate response to a report of child abuse pertaining to an adoption that she had previously supervised, which ultimately resulted in catastrophic injuries to the child. Upon learning of the child’s injuries, Shallal notified the Department of Social Services (DSS), which faulted both Shallal’s poor performance and CSS’s institutional practices. DSS did not, however, recommend Shallal’s dismissal. Indeed, according to Shallal, similar errors did not result in the discharge of other employees. DSS officials then met with Quinn to discuss their findings, and Quinn subsequently addressed the matter with Shallal. Their discussion became heated, with “Shallal stat[ing] her intention to report Quinn’s abuses of alcohol and agency funds if he failed to, in her words, ‘straighten up.’”21 Ultimately, Quinn made the decision to discharge Shallal, citing the DSS’s findings as cause for her termination and accusing her of gross misconduct and negligence in supervising the adoption of the child. Shallal thereafter brought suit claiming that these facts gave rise to a WPA claim, but the circuit court granted summary disposition in favor of CSS because Shallal had failed to show that she was “about to report” a violation.22 The Court of Appeals affirmed on this basis, holding that there was no immediacy to Shallal’s threatened reporting of Quinn given that those threats were conditioned on Quinn’s continued 21 Shallal, 455 Mich at 607-608. 22 MCL 15.362. 11 misconduct.23 This Court disagreed, concluding that Shallal had presented sufficient evidence to create a question of fact with regard to whether she was about to report a violation and, thus, whether she had engaged in protected activity. Because this Court concluded that Shallal’s “express threat to the wrongdoer that she would report him if he did not straighten up, especially coupled with her other actions, was more than ample to conclude that reasonable minds could find that she was ‘about to report’ a suspected violation of the law to the DSS,”24 it reversed that aspect of the lower courts’ decisions. However, despite ruling that Shallal had engaged in protected activity, this Court affirmed the grant of summary disposition to CSS on the alternative basis of causation. That is, this Court determined that Shallal was unable to set forth a prima facie case under the WPA because she “failed to establish a causal connection between her actions and her firing.”25 To support this holding, this Court observed that many courts have held that an employee’s bad faith will preclude recovery under a whistleblower statute. It then cited, among others, federal case Wolcott v Champion International Corp26 for the proposition that “[t]he primary motivation of an employee pursuing a whistleblower claim ‘must be a desire to inform the public on matters of public concern, and not personal vindictiveness.’”27 This Court then explained: 23 Shallal, 455 Mich at 608-609. 24 Id. at 621. 25 Id. 26 Wolcott v Champion Int’l Corp, 691 F Supp 1052 (WD Mich, 1987). 27 Shallal, 455 Mich at 621, quoting Wolcott, 691 F Supp at 1065. 12 Where, however, an employee . . . keeps the matter quiet for more than a year, eventually revealing it not to the appropriate authorities or even to others for the purpose of preventing public injury, but rather for some other limited and private purpose, however laudable that purpose may appear to the employee, no such protection is afforded. [Otherwise] we would be discouraging disclosure and correction of unlawful or improper acts by encouraging employees to “go along” and then keep quiet reserving comment or disclosure until a time best suited to the advancement of their own interests.[28] Determining that Shallal had “used her own situation to extort [CSS] not to fire her,” this Court held that there was no causal connection between Shallal’s firing and the protected activity when “no reasonable juror could conclude that [Shallal] threatened to report Quinn out of an altruistic motive of protecting the public.”29 Because Quinn’s decision to fire Shallal preceded Shallal’s threat to report him, and Shallal was aware that she was going to be fired before threatening to report Quinn, this Court concluded that Shallal “[could not] use the whistleblowers’ act as a shield against being fired . . . .”30