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Klippi v. Lord6/24/2004
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 977(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 977(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 977.
Elizabeth Klippi appeals the grant of summary judgment in favor of her former employer, Lord, Bissell & Brook (LBB) and her former supervisor, LBB partner LouCinda Laughlin, on her claims of defamation and constructive wrongful termination in violation of public policy.
We affirm. We conclude that the remarks that form the basis of Klippi's defamation claim, consisting of a description of her appearance and behavior and a question about possible drug use, were not defamatory as a matter of law. We further find that Klippi failed to establish intolerable working conditions to support her claim of wrongful constructive discharge.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Klippi graduated from law school in 1996, and joined LBB as an associate attorney on May 8, 1998. For the next three years, Klippi worked almost exclusively for Laughlin on insurance coverage cases.
Laughlin took an interest in Klippi's professional development, and in December 1999 Laughlin gave Klippi a superlative year-end performance review. The LBB partner who conducted Klippi's review told her she needed to work with other partners and handle a variety of litigation matters outside of insurance coverage, but the amount of her "`exceptional'" raise indicated she had a bright future at the firm.
According to Klippi, her job situation took a turn for the worse in July 1999, when Laughlin became romantically involved with a man in New Jersey, and was frequently out of the office. Klippi claims that Laughlin visited New Jersey approximately two weeks out of every month, leaving Klippi to manage Laughlin's cases alone and perform much of Laughlin's work without any direction or guidance from Laughlin, who was not even accessible by telephone. Frequently, upon her return from New Jersey, Laughlin would reprimand Klippi for making the "wrong" decision on issues that Klippi asserts Laughlin herself should have made. Klippi witnessed Laughlin lie to clients and partners when they asked where she was, and on several occasions, Laughlin even asked Klippi to lie to partners and clients about Laughlin's whereabouts. In May and June of 2000, the two other associates in the practice group left the firm, leaving Klippi to run Laughlin's practice by herself. In June 2000 Laughlin told Klippi she intended to groom Klippi to take over her book of business. But Klippi felt burdened by the workload, and believed her responsibilities for Laughlin's work was preventing her from diversifying her practice as she had been advised to do at her 1999 year-end performance review.
In February 2001 Klippi received a positive performance review for the year 2000. In particular, Laughlin's evaluation of Klippi was excellent. But Klippi failed to meet her billable hour requirement for the year, and on April 19, 2001 she received a letter from the firm informing her that she would not receive a raise. She then met with the Los Angeles representative on the associate compensation committee, who told her that her substantive work was fine, and her failure to receive a raise had nothing to do with her performance.
Later that day Klippi met with Laughlin, who confirmed that her work was excellent, and she was denied a raise solely because she had fallen short of LBB's billable hour requirement. During that meeting Klippi told Laughlin she
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