Employee Accuses Company of Fraud, Gets Hit With $50K Judgment

Here's something you don't see often: An employee attempts to be a whistleblower by accusing a major corporation for wrongdoing, and ends up owing that major corporation thousands of dollars for defamation. Lesson learned? If you're going to accuse someone of something, don't go running to the media with it until your information has been verified.

It all happened in Racine County, Wis., where Caledonia resident Michael DeGuelle quit his job at S.C. Johnson, grabbed some company documents on the way out and publicly accused the S.C. Johnson cleaning-products company of committing tax fraud, according to an extensive article on Caledonia Patch. Apparently, DeGuelle did a lot of media interviews.