Jensen

Sean Jensen seeks reversal of a judgment of nonsuit following his opening statement at the trial of his defamation action against his former employer, Hewlett-Packard Company, and one of its supervisors, Rod Smith. In a nutshell, the lawsuit involves a difference of opinion between an employer and an employee about the quality of the employee’s work. A Hewlett-Packard supervisor, Hank Phelps, evaluated the employee, Jensen, as needing to improve his on-the-job performance in certain respects. Jensen took offense at the evaluation, claimed it was false, and accused Phelps of trying to hide his own incompetence. He demanded the evaluation be removed from his personnel file and challenged Phelps “to prove his various allegations to an impartial factfinder.” Hewlett-Packard investigated the matter and sided with Phelps. Jensen filed the underlying lawsuit, but continued working at Hewlett-Packard.

As a prelude to our holding, we express our strong judicial disfavor for libel suits based on communications in employment performance reviews, particularly when, as here, the tort claim appears to be an attempted end run around Foley v. Interactive Data Corp. (1988) 47 Cal.3d 654…