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Tortious Interference – Employment

By: Derek Hawkins//October 25, 2016//

Tortious Interference – Employment

By: Derek Hawkins//October 25, 2016//

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Stephen D. Wesbrook, PH.D. v. Karl J. Ulrich, M.D. et al

Case No.: 15-3870

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and KANNE and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges

Focus: Tortious Interference – Employment

This appeal presents issues under Wisconsin law on the scope of tort remedies a fired at-will employee might have not against his employer but against individual supervisors and co-workers. Plaintiff Dr. Stephen Wesbrook, a former employee of the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, brought this lawsuit against Dr. Edward Belongia, a former colleague, and Dr. Karl Ulrich, the chief executive officer of the Marshfield Clinic. Wesbrook contends that Belongia and Ulrich tortiously interfered with his at-will employment, engineering his termination by publishing defamatory statements about him to the Marshfield Clinic board of directors. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants. Wesbrook has appealed. Wisconsin tort law governs this case, which is within the federal courts’ diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. The undisputed facts show that the defendants’ statements about the plaintiff were true or substantially true and therefore privileged. Under Wisconsin law, an at-will employee cannot recover from former co-workers and supervisors for tortious interference on the basis of their substantially truthful statements made within the enterprise, no matter the motives underlying those statements. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.

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