In a unanimous decision handed down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on March 27, 2018, the Court held that non-economic damages, such as embarrassment, humiliation, loss of reputation and mental anguish are available to plaintiffs under the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law. See Bailets v. Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, et al., No. 126 MAP 2016 (March 27, 2018).
The Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law prohibits public employers from discharging, threatening, discriminating or retaliating against an employee because the employee made a good faith report of wrongdoing or the employee participated in an investigation of the employer’s wrongdoing. There are two important components of a Pennsylvania Whistleblower claim: First, it only applies to employers who are “public bod[ies] or receive money from a public body to perform work. While many believe this means only a public employer, such as a municipality or school district, it is much broader. If your company receives any type of government funding or grants, it may qualify as a public body.
The second component is that the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law does not require that the employee blowing the whistle be able to prove waste or wrongdoing, the employee simply has to make the report in “good faith.” The Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law is designed to encourage employees to report bad conduct without fear of reprisal.
Prior to the Bailets decision, it was unclear as to whether the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law permitted a plaintiff to recover “non-economic damages,” which are more easily thought of as non-calculable damages. These include embarrassment, humiliation, distress, etc. These damages are the intangible losses that a whistleblower may experience for coming forward.
Since the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law is created by the legislature, the courts look to the language of the law, which only permitted recovery of “actual damages;” a phrase left undefined by the Legislature. There was never any doubt that whistleblowers could recover “economic damages” which are typically lost wages in the form of backpay and frontpay. But, if a whistleblower was only entitled to economic damages, an employer would be permitted to retaliate against the whistleblower as long as the employer did not fire the whistleblower. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court thought this would leave “whistleblowers uncompensated for any non-economic harms they must suffer as a result of their decision to expose the wrongdoing of the employers, harms which lie completely outside such items as loss of pay and benefits.”
Overall, this decision is great news for whistleblowers in Pennsylvania, as it will allow for larger monetary awards and settlements. It is also great news for the taxpayers, as employees will be more likely to come forward to report waste, abuse, fraud at public employers and companies receiving public funds.
If you have observed any fraud, waste, accounting errors, or theft at work, please contact the whistleblower attorneys at Klaproth Law to schedule a free, confidential consultation
