A company fires an employee for falsifying a timecard and impersonating a customer in telephone calls to the company. But before the firing the employee gets into an altercation with another employee and the police are called in to investigate. The police question the HR manager, who describes everything to the police including the false timecard incident. The now-fired employee sues the HR manager for defamation. Imagine being that HR manager and getting that summons. What a reward for doing your job!

Jason Blesedell worked for Chillicothe Telephone Company (CTC) from 1996 until his termination on December 17, 2012, most recently as a plant facilities technician. Blesedell was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 578 (the Union). As a plant facilities technician, Blesedell performed repair and installation work on telephone cables and other equipment. Blesedell would go to his work and receive trouble tickets to work on.  After completing the work called for by the trouble ticket, Blesedell would call CTC’s service center to tell a dispatcher that the ticket was cleared. CTC records many of the calls to the service center from technicians, customers, and other callers.

During the week of Dec 3, 2012, Blesedell’s supervisor instructed him to continue working on trouble tickets rather than attend some available training. The next day Blesedell completed one ticket and then, in a phone call, gave the dispatcher the impression that he was going to training.

The dispatcher assigned Blesedell’s remaining trouble tickets to other technicians, and then called his supervisor. The supervisor contacted Blesedell, Blesedell denied he was not working, and subsequently handed in a timecard that showed he had done four hours’ work that afternoon on buried cable maintenance.

The supervisor contacted HR. HR investigated, reviewing Blesedell’s phone conversation to the dispatcher (which had been recorded). HR found the phone call inconclusive, but looked at GPS records for Blesedell’s vehicle on the date in question. Those records did not correlate with any work on buried cable.

Based on this information, HR called a fact-finding meeting to determine if Blesedell had filed a false time card.  At the meeting, Blesedell changed his story, claiming he had been working on a damaged pedestal that afternoon, not working on buried cable. The meeting adjourned for HR to conduct a second investigation.

After the meeting, Blesedell had the dispatcher pull the trouble ticket for the pedestal work; that ticket was created on December 10, but Blesedell had told the dispatcher, and it had been duly recorded, that the work was actually done on the 4^th.

More investigating confirmed that the pedestal work had been done on the 10^th, not the 4^th. But then, several days later, two calls came into the service desk, apparently from a customer, and mentioned that the pedestal work had been done on the 4^th. The recordings subsequently revealed that Blesedell, not a customer, had made at least one and probably both of the calls.

CTC fired Blesedell for falsifying a timecard and impersonating a customer in telephone calls. The grievance process followed but the union, after reviewing the documentation compiled by HR, declined to fight the termination.

Meanwhile, before and unrelated to the firing, Blesedell had filed a police report against another employee for threatening his life during some horseplay that had gotten out of hand.

That incident brought the police into the picture. They interviewed the HR manager, who described Blesedell’s overall situation, including the timecard incident and investigation, to them. Their investigation also revealed that the other employee accused Blesedell of selling drugs.

Blesedell sued the company, the union and the HR Manager, accusing the HR manager in particular of defaming him to the union officials and the police.

The trial court dismissed Blesedell’s claims at summary judgement, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the trial court. Ohio’s defamation law protects statements made in good faith and limited in publication only to those who have a right or need to know. The HR manager had only reported to both the police and the union what he had learned in his investigations, and thus were protected.

As the takeaway from this case is that statements which may not be knowingly true can give rise to a defamation action. Therefore in an investigation HR must document everything and implicate the wrong-doer only to those with a need to know. If HR does not adhere rigidly to this standard, then he or she may need a personal attorney.

Source: Blesedell v. Chillicothe Telephone Co., et al., No. 15-3542 (6^th Circuit Court of Appeal, 1/22/16)