by Ben Vernia | April 14th, 2010
On April 12, in an unpublished decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a suit brought by a former Raytheon Co. employee under the Florida Whistleblower Act. The employee alleged that the company had terminated him after he brought to its attention that continuing with a DOD project to replace obsolete equipment after replacement parts were known to exist would violate the False Claims Act. The Court wrote:
Here, Bush failed to present sufficient evidence from which a jury could conclude that he objected to a violation of a “law, rule, or regulation,” as that phrase is defined by Florida law. Bush said to the Raytheon supervisors that the engineers needed to “look at [their] funding statement; if there’s no obsolete parts, there may be a problem.” TI30B is a funding statement delineating the terms of engineering services under a government contract. It is not a law, rule or regulation enacted by a legislative or administrative body.
Bush argues that when he objected to Raytheon violating the terms of TI30B he insinuated that Raytheon was violating the False Claims Act (“FCA”). Specifically, Bush contends that all of the Raytheon supervisors had received ethics training on contract compliance, were aware of the FCA, and “knew or should have known the redesign was illegal.” Bush did not advance this argument in the district court. In any event, there is no evidence in the record that Bush explicitly objected to the redesign on FCA grounds. Indeed, Bush admitted that his objection to the violation of TI30B was “subtle.”
Because TI30B is not a law, rule, or regulation within the meaning of the Florida Whistleblower Act, Bush has failed to establish his prima facie case. Thus, we do not address Bush’s arguments about whether he presented evidence as to the other elements of a Florida Whistleblower Act claim or whether Bush presented evidence that Raytheon’s legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for its actions were pretext.
