NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Staff workers who sued former Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg for laying them off after withdrawing from the 2020 race will pursue an appeal in their lawsuit against him.
Six former employees filed a notice of appeal on April 21 in New York federal court against Mike Bloomberg 2020 and Bloomberg himself. They were dealt a loss by Judge Laura Taylor Swain on March 25 when she ruled their employment at Bloomberg’s campaign was on an at-will status, despite his oral promise to keep them on until the November general election if he had dropped out of the race by then.
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.”