When Michael Pircio blew the whistle on FirstEnergy Corp., the electric utility allegedly involved with former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder’s $60 million racketeering scheme, the company filed a lawsuit to make an example out of him, Pircio said Monday in a court filing.
When FirstEnergy found out that, days after his termination, Pircio downloaded nearly 60 files from company servers, it filed a $15 million lawsuit in federal Ohio court to send a signal to anyone else who might consider such behavior, according to a motion to dismiss filed by Pircio on Monday.
Clearsulting, a FirstEnergy contractor, hired Pircio in February to audit FirstEnergy’s processes in compliance with the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act. He was terminated on July 30, the same day Householder was criminally indicted.
“Both Clearsulting and FirstEnergy are reticent to admit that Pircio had the statutory right under the Defend Trade Secrets Act to do what he did,” his legal team said in the motion. “Instead, they are going on the offense to ‘out’ and punish this particular whistleblower and send a message to potential other whistleblowers that if they report on them, these two powerhouse companies and their fleet of lawyers are coming after them.”
The Defend Trade Secrets Act was passed by the Obama administration in 2016 and gives immunity to whistleblowers who disclose trade secrets made in confidence to an attorney or federal, state, or local governmental official “solely for the purpose of reporting or investigating a suspected violation of law,” according to the American Bar Association.
According to the filing, Pircio only provided the documents to his whistleblower-representing attorney, H. Vincent McKnight, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is currently investigating the utility, according to filings made by FirstEnergy alongside its initial complaint.
FirstEnergy declined to comment on the new filings.
