Opinion ID: 1198956
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Violation of FAA regulations

Text: Defendant next attempts to refute plaintiffs wrongful termination claim on the ground that plaintiff failed to prove defendant actually violated any law, including the FAA regulations, or that defendant's alleged inadequate inspection practices were, in fact, hazardous. Defendant specifically relies on Jennings, in which we held that the FEHA statutory ban on age discrimination was inseparable from ... the legislative statement of policy ( Jennings, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 125, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 275, 876 P.2d 1074), and that [i]t would be unreasonable to expect employers who are expressly exempted from the FEHA ban on age discrimination to nonetheless realize that they must comply with the law from which they are exempted under pain of possible tort liability. ( Id. at pp. 135-136, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 275, 876 P.2d 1074.) In Jennings, however, we observed that [t]he absence of an FEHA remedy would not negate the existence of a common law tort remedy if another law created the right on which this action is predicated. ( Id. at p. 130, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 275, 876 P.2d 1074.) Here, plaintiff predicated his action on the important public policy Congress declared when it enacted the Federal Aviation Act. (49 U.S.C. § 44701; In re Air Crash Disaster Near Silver Plume, Colo. (D.Kan.1977) 445 F.Supp. 384, 400 [Congress's intent in enacting the act was to improve air safety and to prevent or reduce tragic aviation accidents.].) The significant safety regulations that the FAA promulgated to implement the act, which require prime manufacturers to establish detailed inspection systems for components they produce and to ensure that their subcontractors or suppliers do the same, are potentially implicated here. (14 C.F.R. § 21.143 (1998).) Whether Or not plaintiff can prove his allegations at trial is not for us to determine. To the extent defendant also claims that the FAA regulations do not even apply to Its operations because it apparently never applied for certification under the FAA provisions, its argument also fails at the summary judgment stage of proceedings. If plaintiffs allegations are true, then defendant arguably misrepresented the safety of the parts shipped to prime manufacturers such as Boeing, on which information these manufacturers would foreseeably rely for their own certification program, causing these manufacturers to submit to the FAA information that would have misrepresented the safety and soundness of some airplane parts. Therefore, whether or not defendant itself was applying for certification, there can be no question that any representations it made that caused the certification of an airplane with defective parts was a breach of a fundamental public policy as evidenced in a federal regulation. (See United States v. Steiner Plastics Mfg. Co. (2d Cir.1956) 231 F.2d 149, 151-152 [airplane subcontractor that delivered a number of cockpits to the aircraft assembly company with false approval certificates attached, thereby implying they had passed inspection, violated statutory government fraud provisions (18 U.S.C. § 1001) even without proof the cockpits were in any way defective].) Accordingly, as the Court of Appeal stated: The fact [the inspections] were performed by [defendant] as a `manufacturer's supplier' rather than by Boeing as a `prime' manufacturer does not mean they were any less important to the public policy favoring safe manufacture of passenger aircraft. Nor does it mean the honest performance of those inspections was not `tethered to' the statutes establishing that policy and authorizing the FAA to promulgate regulations furthering that policy. No reasonable component manufacturer could read those regulations and believe it was free to supply parts which failed inspection or could perform inspections that failed to meet the standards established by `prime manufacturers,' e.g., aircraft assembly companies such as Boeing. Moreover, as the Court of Appeal has held, an employee need not prove an actual violation of law; it suffices if the employer fired him for reporting his reasonably based suspicions of illegal activity. (See Collier v. Superior Court (1991) 228 Cal.App.3d 1117, 1125, 279 Cal.Rptr. 453 ( Collier ) [An agreement prohibiting an employee from informing anyone in the employer's organization about reasonably based suspicions of ongoing criminal conduct ... would be a disservice ... to the interests of the public and would therefore present serious public policy concerns not present in Foley. (Fn.omitted.)].) Thus, though it may be unclear whether defendant, as a subcontractor or supplier, legally violated the FAA regulations, its alleged conduct in shipping nonconforming parts to an aircraft manufacturer violated the public policies embodied in the regulations. In other words, defendant's alleged conduct may have contravened the fundamental well-established policy delineated in the act and its regulations. ( Gantt, supra, 1 Cal.4th at p. 1095, 4 Cal.Rptr.2d 874, 824 P.2d 680.) That the FAA's regulations place the burden on prime manufactures to establish quality control inspections systems, and not on subcontractors, does not imply that subcontractors may undermine or ignore the regulations by shipping allegedly defective parts to prime manufacturers. Therefore, plaintiffs suspicion that defendant's conduct may have violated the act and its regulations was certainly reasonably based. ( Collier, supra, 228 Cal. App.3d at p. 1125, 279 Cal.Rptr. 453.)