What is a whistleblower claim?

A whistleblower claim is another claim that arises out of an Illinois statute where if an individual goes beyond his work – if an individual, for example, sees something that is illegal. He sees his supervisors doing something illegal at work or illegal activity transpires at work and that individual goes beyond the company and goes to a police or other appropriate authority and reports that circumstance and then gets fired for it, that’s a whistleblower cause of action.

I represented an individual way out in the far west suburbs who was physically attacked by a supervisor at work. He did the appropriate thing and went to the police and reported the attack. And not long thereafter, he was fired. And I filed the whistleblower claim. And it became pretty apparent very early on in the case that they had absolutely no defense and they had fired this poor guy because he had decided to do the appropriate thing and go to the police department and report this attack.

Coincidentally, it turned out that the guy who had attacked him had attacked other people. So, this was a workplace where folks were literally in danger because of this guy. So, eh had done the right thing when he attacked them. As part of the lawsuit, that guy was sent to – the guy who had attacked my client was sent to a facility where he really had no contact with anybody. So, not only did we accomplish a settlement on behalf of my client, but we took this dangerous guy out of the workplace.