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US Bancorp Investments Employment Dispute Ends With Mixed Result
February 11, 2016
In marriage and employment, the honeymoon may be short and the relationship ends in an acrimonious and bitter divorce. In one of the great quirks of law, the divorce proceedings often last as long or longer than the marriage. Following about a one-year employment relationship, a former U.S. Bancorp Investments employee sued the firm and, thereafter, it took about a year for the arbitration proceedings to end with a decision. The odd thing about the outcome of the case, both parties sort of won and both parties sort of loss. Sounds a lot like the post-game analysis by many divorced couples, no?
Awards
The FINRA Arbitration Panel found:- USBI liable to and ordered it to pay to Respondent Farris $100,000 in compensatory damages on Count I: Defamation.
Although the Panel left unchanged the Reason for Termination on Farris's Form U5, the arbitrators recommended the expungement of the Termination Explanation based upon their finding that it was defamatory in nature. The Panel recommended that the Termination Explanation be replaced with:
Failure to keep management advised of the status of arbitration with a former employer; difficulty in accepting supervision; loss of confidence.
- Farris liable to and ordered him to pay to USBI $107,088.00 in compensatory damages for Count II in the Counterclaim: Unjust Enrichment.
Who won this case? Frankly, we would need to speak with Farris and USBI to figure out what each party was hoping to accomplish by taking this to a hearing. Similarly, we would need to determine whether there were any viable settlement offers on the table, and, from the vantage point of hindsight, figure out if one of the parties should have taken what was being offered.
If we simply look at the dollars at issue, about $107,000 in a demanded repayment of a loan by USBI, Farris seems to have won that battle because he only winds up having to pay $7,088. On the other hand, if we consider Farris's demand for $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages, then USBI may be deemed the victor.
Beyond the financial claims, there is the issue about the wording of the circumstances attendant to Farris's termination by USBI. In light of the fact that the FINRA Arbitration Decision doesn't set forth what USBI had submitted as the original Reason for Termination, we are left to wonder as to how nasty the write-up was because the FINRA Arbitration Panel deemed it "defamatory." That being said, I don't think Farris walks away with a wonderful revision by way of the Panel's recommended language because he is depicted as having failed to keep management updated on a prior employment arbitration, is described as having difficulty accepting supervision, and, finally, is characterized as causing his employer to lose confidence in him.