AOL must pay $1.5 million to fired Netscape executive
Posted by Sleeper on 05 June 2002 - 08:54 · 5 comments & 191 views
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Lawyers for Ronald J. Arnold, an ex-Netscape vice president, will return to Superior Court today to ask the jury to slap AOL with punitive damages, raising the possibility the verdict could multiply by millions of dollars.
The trial stems from a defamation lawsuit filed by Arnold, 49, former national head of information systems for Netscape in Mountain View and previously director of a similar operation in Europe. Arnold contended in his suit that he was wrongfully accused of doctoring an administrative assistant's pay records, and then smeared after being fired in 1999, a year after AOL acquired Netscape.
The jury agreed, ordering AOL to pay Arnold nearly $1.1 million for economic losses -- mostly stock options he missed out on as a result of losing his job. The jury also gave him $360,000 for injury to his reputation and $75,000 for emotional distress.
San Francisco attorney Barbara Lawless, who represents Arnold, declined comment because the jury is still considering the case. AOL officials also offered only a limited statement as a result of the remaining punitive damages phase.
``Our position has been and continues to be clearly set forth in the filings we've made with the court,'' said Nicholas Graham, spokesman for Virginia-based AOL.
In court papers and during the trial, the two sides have offered very different pictures of what happened to Arnold, an Irish national first recruited by Netscape to be director of information systems in Paris in 1997.
Arnold maintains that he was a well-regarded executive until being ``blindsided'' by AOL management in 1999, when he was confronted by human resources officials and others with allegations that he instructed an assistant to falsify her overtime records to pay her more, court papers say. The assistant told colleagues that Arnold encouraged the bogus record-keeping to keep her from leaving for another company, according to court records.
However, Arnold insists he never knew about the false overtime, and never instructed the assistant to inflate her overtime. After a three-day investigation, Arnold was fired despite repeatedly protesting that he was being wrongfully accused, the lawsuit alleged.
From there, the suit contends that a smear campaign followed Arnold throughout the high-tech industry as he tried to get another job. Many companies, he asserts, were told that was fired for falsifying company records.
In court papers filed in April describing its defense, AOL flatly denied that it was responsible for any defamatory statements against Arnold. The company argued that Arnold was fired, justifiably, for his role in AOL being defrauded out of overtime, and that the probe of his conduct was triggered by the assistant's accusations.
The trial is taking place before Superior Court Judge Robert Foley.