Ashley Gjovik - Updates (RSS)

2025-06-02 | Apple Files an Amended Answer that Still Does Not Explain Why It Fired Me

6/3/2025

Apple's "ANswer" to My Complaint it Illegally Fired Me

On May 19, 2025, the Court granted my motion to strike multiple defenses from Apple’s Answer to my Fifth Amended Complaint in the Gjovik v Apple civil litigation. (You can read my earlier post here.)

The Court found that many of Apple’s defenses — Apple's arguments for why Apple should not be held liable for the harm it caused me — were legally deficient. This is litigation, so it is not enough to simply claim a termination was lawful or justified; a defendant must identify:

What rule or policy was violated,
What conduct allegedly violated that rule,
How that violation occurred, and
How it justifies the employer’s actions under the law.

The Court struck a number of Apple’s defenses, including:

Failure to mitigate damages – suggesting I didn’t try hard enough to reduce the harm they caused;
Unclean hands – claiming I acted improperly and thus deserve no relief;
After-acquired evidence – implying Apple could have fired me for different reasons if only it had known sooner;
Workers’ compensation exclusivity – attempting to block my claims by pointing to prior filings;
Business necessity/privilege – implying Apple is simply entitled to take whatever action it deems fit;
Reservation of future defenses – a placeholder tactic rejected by courts as improper.

The Court directed Apple to file an amended Answer within 14 days — by June 3 — and required that each defense include concrete allegations supported by actual facts.

Apple’s Amended Answer (Filed June 2, 2025)

Apple filed a revised Answer one day early. However, the changes are mostly superficial. The newly inserted language is generic, formulaic, and legally insufficient. Example inserted language (repeated verbatim across defenses):

“Plaintiff’s employment was terminated for legitimate, non-discriminatory and/or non-retaliatory business reasons… Plaintiff disclosed confidential product-related information… and failed to cooperate… during the Apple investigatory process.”

These additions include no names, no dates, no documents, no policy citations, and no context — only broad, conclusory language with no factual grounding.

Even in its revised “failure to mitigate damages” defense, Apple simply states that it is “currently unaware” of whether I sought other employment and is preserving the defense pending discovery. This defies the Court’s instruction to include some factual basis to justify asserting the defense.

You can view the Microsoft Word "diff" of the first and second version here (and excerpt below).

Legal Analysis (Crash Loop)

Apple’s filing fails to comply with the Court’s order. Courts require more than legal conclusions — especially after being told exactly what’s missing. Apple appears to have simply copied the Court’s language back into the pleading without supplying the required facts.

The Court’s Prior Instructions:

“Apple should still provide some concrete allegations… to support the defense.”
“The Court strikes the defenses only because Apple has not provided concrete facts.”
“This information is, at least in part, within its possession, custody, or control.”
“Concrete allegations are needed.”

Yet, Apple’s response simply recites: “Plaintiff disclosed confidential product-related information… failed to cooperate… violated Apple policies…”

That is not compliance — it is deflection. Further, Apple also:

Continues to allege misconduct without citing any underlying facts;
Vaguely accuses me of providing “inaccurate and/or incomplete information to government entities and the public” — a veiled claim of perjury, with no support;
Asserts that I “requested” paid leave — again, with no citation — despite my contemporaneous public statements of the factual basis for the scenario, and federal findings indicating the leave was an unlawful suspension.

The Court granted leave to amend to allow Apple to defend itself — not to recycle prior language or make new baseless accusations. This failure to comply not only leaves Apple exposed to another Rule 12(f) motion to strike, but risks a judicial finding of bad faith or procedural abuse.

Consequences for Apple

If the Court strikes these defenses again:

Apple loses its "failure to mitigate" defense — meaning they can’t argue I should’ve just “got another job.”
It loses the “offset” argument — no deduction for imaginary earnings.
It loses the “unclean hands” and “after-acquired evidence” defenses — no smears, no post hoc justifications.
And it loses its final procedural weapon — the threat of dragging this out endlessly with vague innuendo.

This narrows the case. It tightens discovery. It makes the damages math simpler. And it removes one of the few remaining litigation levers. And the risk for Apple, if it refuses to resolve this, only compounds.

Behind the Scenes

This amended Answer does not reflect a good-faith attempt to cure pleading deficiencies. It reflects a deliberate retreat from factual litigation altogether.

Apple was given 14 days to revise its defenses after the Court struck them for being conclusory and unsupported. The Court explicitly instructed Apple to plead concrete facts — names, dates, events, documents. Instead, Apple submitted a filing that merely repeats legal conclusions, substitutes the Court’s own illustrative language as if it were factual pleading, and copy-pastes boilerplate text across multiple defenses — likely assembled in under 30 minutes.

This is not a legal defense strategy. It is a procedural maneuver — unusually cautious, and concurrently reckless.

Apple has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity for aggressive litigation. It filed nine motions to dismiss, repeatedly sought sanctions, and briefed complex jurisdictional and preemption issues. Since 2023, Apple’s litigation teams have fought my detailed allegations of environmental violations, racketeering, obstruction of justice, and antitrust violations. It is represented by multiple top-tier law firms with national reputations, and its internal legal department rivals most federal agencies. To suggest this filing reflects negligence or inexperience defies credibility.

There is only one plausible explanation for this level of risk aversion: Apple did not want to tie itself to any factual narrative. More specifically, it appears Apple may have been preparing to plead “facts” derived through extrajudicial influence — and was ultimately forced to abandon that plan.

In the days leading up to this filing, I raised concerns — through protected speech and formal agency communications — that Apple appeared to be interfering in parallel government proceedings, seemingly to engineer official findings to then cite in its civil Answer. I notified both government officials and the public (albeit cryptically) that if Apple exploited premature or coordinated agency action to shape its defense, it would face immediate and appropriate legal response from me.

It is now especially notable that Apple’s Answer:

Makes no reference to new findings;
Omits mention of any material public facts central to its asserted defenses;
Affirms no facts it is already on record as knowing; and
Introduces vague, recycled allegations — while leveling a new, unsubstantiated claim that I “misled government entities and the public.”

This last allegation is not just unsupported — it is reactive. It appears crafted to preemptively deflect from the very type of interference I warned about. This is not coincidence. It is confirmation.

To underscore the point: Apple appeared to have coordinated with a major news outlet to publish a story reinforcing its planned defense narrative — timed to support a position in another proceeding. I became aware of this effort in real time. I contacted the outlet and, in precise legal terms, explained what Apple was doing: attempting to manipulate press coverage to manufacture evidentiary material. The article was pulled. It was never published.

This isn’t the strategy of a company trying to win on the merits. It’s the strategy of a company trying to control the record — and failing.

Containment is not a legal strategy. It’s reputational triage.

And in litigation — where discovery, testimony, and trial timelines exist to surface the truth — triage almost always fails. Apple’s refusal to plead facts is now part of the evidentiary record. Its use of boilerplate in place of fact is part of the litigation history.

If this Answer represents the collapse of a pre-fabricated narrative — forced to detour after exposure or internal panic — then what you’re seeing is not defense strategy: it’s collapse.

-Ashley

Diff of Apple's First Answer and Amended Answer: