Petrou's PG&E defamation ruling heads to high court as she faces voters

Justice Ioana Petrou's most closely watched opinion is before the California Supreme Court, which will decide when fired workers may sue employers for defamation.

In Hearn v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., A167742, filed Jan. 24, 2025, Petrou wrote for a divided 1st District Court of Appeal panel that wiped out a $2.16 million Napa County jury verdict for Todd Hearn. The PG&E lineman said the utility defamed him in the investigation that led to his firing.

Petrou, on Division Three since December 2018, was retained in 2022 for the rest of her predecessor's term and seeks a new term Nov. 3.

Hearn said his warnings that PG&E's "Tripsaver" devices could spark wildfires led to false accusations that he had falsified timecards. The jury rejected his whistleblower retaliation claim but found that a consultant's report on him was false and written with malice.

"Tort claims, including defamation, may be brought by former employees against their employers," Petrou wrote. But Hearn's "claim for defamation is a claim for wrongful termination by another name." Justice Victor Rodríguez concurred.

Petrou wrote that such claims "must be based on conduct other than that giving rise to the employee's termination" and cannot seek damages solely for the lost job.

Presiding Justice Alison M. Tucher dissented, writing that she was "perplexed and unpersuaded by the majority's attempt to craft a more narrow exemption for PG&E." Hearn's wrongful termination claim rested on retaliation, not the report, she noted, and the jury had rejected it. She wrote that the majority, "displacing the jury's findings," adopted its own theory that PG&E had already decided to fire Hearn when it suspended him.

Petrou wrote that the dissent "does not address the discordance of allowing an employee who has failed to prove wrongful termination to then recover termination damages, and only termination damages, via another label."

The Supreme Court granted review in May 2025 to decide whether a fired employee may sue for defamation when it allegedly contributed to the firing, or must sue for wrongful discharge.

Hearn's lawyer, Monique Olivier of Olivier & Schreiber PC, argued in her opening brief that the majority "erred by creating an absolute, non-textual immunity for defamatory employer conduct that has never been endorsed by the Legislature or this Court in the 150 years since defamation was codified."

"There is no employer exemption to liability for defamation when an employee proves that an employer published malicious false statements, which everyone agrees occurred here," Olivier wrote in an email to the Daily Journal last year.

Petrou's other opinions show the same insistence on specifics and process.She also struck down a San Francisco juvenile probation condition letting officers put a 16-year-old on electronic monitoring for up to 30 days without judicial approval, ruling in In re C.M., A175119, filed Aug. 14.

In Berlanga v. University of San Francisco, A165976, filed Feb. 29, 2024, she upheld summary adjudication for USF, holding that its course listings and invitations to join a dynamic student body were not a specific promise of in-person instruction that would entitle students to tuition refunds after classes moved online in 2020.

Lawyers noted the same trait when she was a trial judge. "She cares about procedure," Oakland family lawyer Marjory Kaplan told the Daily Journal in 2011. "In family law, we can be a little mushy around rules of evidence and testimony and she holds us to a high standard."

A former federal prosecutor, Petrou rose to chief of major crimes in the Northern District of California. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to the Alameda County Superior Court in 2010, and Gov. Jerry Brown elevated her in 2018.

Her family moved from Bologna, Italy, to a one-bedroom apartment in Queens when she was 5. She spoke no English and remembers watching "I Love Lucy" with her mother because they could enjoy its slapstick humor.