Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WHISTLEBLOWERS—D. Mass.: Court grants summary judgment in Salesforce whistleblower case, (May 1, 2026)

By R. Jason Howard, J.D.

The plaintiff failed to show that Salesforce knew or suspected that he was engaged in protected activity.

The Massachusetts District Court has granted Salesforce’s motion for summary judgment after finding that a former employee’s alleged whistleblower retaliation claim failed because his “communications with Salesforce executives were insufficient to put Salesforce on notice of his protected activity” pursuant to whistleblower protection provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Wirth v. Salesforce, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-11718-BEM (D. Mass. Apr. 27, 2026)).

Salesforce. Salesforce is a software company that provides business applications for organizations. The plaintiff was hired as an executive at Salesforce when Salesforce acquired Evergage in 2020. As part of the acquisition, Salesforce acquired Evergage’s customer data platform (CDP), which unifies customer data from multiple sources “so that data can be... used to complete many functions.” The plaintiff was tasked with leading the unification of Evergage’s product with Salesforce’s CDP which involved integrating additional real time capabilities into the CDP.

Salesforce planned to announce the unification at its annual conference on September 20-22, 2022 but, in the months leading up to the conference, the plaintiff expressed concerns about the timeline for achieving a real-time CDP in several messages to executives, including one sent approximately two weeks before the conference that told executives that the CDP was not currently ready and would not be for 9 months or so. The plaintiff testified that he thought an announcement by Salesforce that the real-time CDP would be generally available, would be defrauding shareholders because it was material as he would have made trading decisions off of that. The plaintiff was terminated on September 9, 2022, and reported Salesforce’s conduct in the months after the conference.

SOX. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), “protects ‘whistleblower’ employees of publicly traded companies by prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees because they provided information about specified potentially unlawful conduct.” To make a prima facie showing of whistleblower retaliation under SOX, the employee’s complaint must allege, among other things, the existence of facts and evidence showing that the employee engaged in a protected activity or conduct. To satisfy the protected activity requirement, an employee must show that he had both a subjective belief and an objectively reasonable belief that the conduct that he reported constituted a violation. In addition, the employee must establish that the respondent knew or suspected that the employee engaged in the protected activity.

Subjective belief. Turning to the plaintiff’s subjective belief, the court explained that he provided sworn testimony of his belief that it would be unlawful for Salesforce to claim that it had a real-time CDP if in fact it did not. That belief was bolstered by other reports to Salesforce executives and the plaintiff telling the marketing team that the CDP would not be ready for 9 months or so. Salesforce pointed to several other pieces of evidence that it argued repudiated the plaintiff’s claim, but the court explained that the extent to which Salesforce’s evidence undercuts the plaintiff’s showing of his subjective belief is best left to the jury. At this stage, the court concluded that “a triable issue of fact exists which precludes the entry of summary judgment.”

Objective belief. The plaintiff also needed to demonstrate that he had an objectively reasonable belief that the conduct constituted securities fraud or shareholder fraud. Here, the court explained that a jury could find that a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position could have concluded, given the delays in achieving the real-time capabilities to be announced at the conference, that Salesforce nevertheless planned to announce real-time CDP at the conference, and that doing so would defraud shareholders, who would make investing decisions in response to the announcement. Because SOX does not require a complainant to prove a violation of the substantive laws, but merely to have a reasonable belief of a violation of the laws, the court concluded that summary judgment was inappropriate as to that prong, where questions of fact remain for the jury.

Employer knowledge. Here, the court explained that “whether an employee’s communication is indeed ‘protected activity’... is distinct from whether the employer had reason to suspect that the communication was protected.” While the court noted that there was no question that the plaintiff expressed concerns about achieving real-time CDP before the conference, he did not do enough to give Salesforce reason to suspect that he was engaged in protected activity. The court concluded that the plaintiff repeatedly raised concerns about the announcement and may have believed that such an announcement could defraud shareholders, but his communications to Salesforce executives were insufficient to put Salesforce on notice of his protected activity.

Conclusion. The court granted Salesforce’s motion for summary judgment.

The case is No. 1:23-cv-11718-BEM.

Judge: Murphy, B.

Attorneys: Patrick J. Hannon (Hartley Michon Robb Hannon LLP) for Karl Wirth. Kathleen Parker (Reed Smith LLP) for Salesforce, Inc.

Companies: Salesforce, Inc.

Cases: Whistleblowers Retaliation Discharge MassachusettsNews