Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 857088.pdf

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First, it points to a lack of temporal proximity between Bittner telling Rotz and Doe

to seek legal advice in 2014 and when he was removed from his RVP role in 2020.

This argument ignores that Fry, Ward, and others instructed Bittner to stop telling

other employees to seek legal advice in July 2018, shortly after Symetra completed

its investigation into Doe’s claims and right before Bittner’s superiors began raising

the concerns about his performance that would ultimately contribute to the

company’s decision to remove him from his RVP position. Moreover, the cases

cited by Symetra on this point are inapposite because they involve employees who,

unlike Bittner, relied solely on circumstantial evidence to prove causation. 11

Second, Symetra notes that it rewarded Bittner after he engaged in

protected activity by promoting him in 2015 and honoring him with the President’s

Club award based on his team’s sales numbers from 2014 to 2019. This argument

fails because we have previously rejected employers’ reliance on “grant[ing] a

raise or promotion prior to implementing a termination as a means of decreasing

their exposure to a valid retaliation claim.” Lodis, 172 Wn. App. at 853.

Additionally, Symetra first learned that Bittner had urged other employees to seek

legal advice no earlier than 2016—after Bittner was promoted. The record also

indicates that RVPs receive the President’s Club award so long as their sales team

11 See Francom v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 98 Wn. App. 845, 862, 991 P.2d 1182 (2000) (where