NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Former New York City mayor and 2020 Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has won a lawsuit brought by staffers on his campaign that he let go.
On March 25, New York federal judge Laura Taylor Swain granted Bloomberg’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleged he reneged on a promise to keep workers until the general election.
Field organizers claimed they were fired after Bloomberg dropped out of the race in March 2020.
“Because the alleged representations of guaranteed employment through November 2020 are contradicted by the at-will provision of Plaintiffs’ offer letters, the court finds that any aspect of Plaintiffs’ claim that is based on the alleged oral representations preceding the offer letters fails as a matter of law,” Swain wrote..
Bloomberg’s lawyers pointed to the at-will provision in a June motion to dismiss.
Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is funding special prosecutors to push a climate change agenda in many state attorney general offices, lost the Democratic nomination.
He had promised salaries nearly double that of other campaigns, the plaintiffs said in their lawsuit.
“And they pledged to keep this promise regardless of whether Bloomberg won the Democratic nomination,” the plaintiffs wrote.
“After Bloomberg lost the Democratic nomination, his campaign unceremoniously dumped thousands of staffers, leaving them with no employment, no income, and no health insurance.”
They also mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic put them in a dire financial state.
Bloomberg 2020 said the fraudulent inducement claim should fail because plaintiffs can’t establish reasonable reliance given the at-will status of their employment. And New York does not recognize promissory estoppel in the employment context, the campaign said.
“(T)o the extent Plaintiffs base their claim for fraudulent inducement on Defendants’ alleged promise that Mr. Bloomberg had committed the resources necessary to keep Campaign offices open through the general election, Plaintiffs’ claim fails for the additional reason that none of the cited statements constituted a promise to employ any particular individual, let alone to employ that individual for a certain duration of time,” Swain wrote.
“To the extent that any Plaintiff construed these statements about general Campaign infrastructure to constitute personal promises of guaranteed employment through November 2020, and relied upon them, such reliance was unreasonable.”