Ex-Apple employee Wayne Goodrich is suing Apple for terminating his position last December, citing a 2005 promise made by Steve Jobs that Goodrich would be set for life with the company.
Wayne Goodrich claims he is a victim of a post-Steve-Jobs Apple, and is pursuing legal action against the company for dismissing him last December, the Telegraph reports. Goodrich claims that Jobs told him on multiple occasions that he would be an Apple employee as long as he wished, on account of his previously valuable contributions to the company’s products.
According to the Telegraph, Goodrich claims he lost his job in December for “business reasons” that he maintains were not related to his work. However, Goodrich claims that Jobs told him in a one-on-one meeting with Jobs in 2005 that he had absolute job security, and repeated in 2010 that even if Jobs was no longer around, Apple would find another position for Goodrich, the Telegraph reports. Goodrich has ties to the development and execution of the iPhone, iPad, and Siri, the lawsuit claims.
The suit seeks compensation for Goodrich’s lost pay, benefits, and emotional distress, the Telegraph reports.
The Goodrich case is the latest result of the lingering effect of Jobs since his death last October, which hasn’t prevented his name from being attached to commentary on Apple products. In May, a Fortune article profiling new Apple CEO Tim Cook cites an anonymous “former insider,” who insisted that “Steve [Jobs] would have lost his mind over Siri.”
Similarly, Apple’s other co-founder Steve Wozniak has been more liberal in his commentary on the company’s new products, as well as its competitors’, since Jobs passed away. In April, just weeks after he declared via Twitter that he was in the market for Nokia’s Windows Phone-powered Lumia 900, Wozniak praised Microsoft’s efforts at cutting into Apple’s mobile market share in an inteview with Gina Smith, the co-author of his autobiography. In June, Wozniak reiterated Fortune’s anonymous source’s sentiments, literally saying “poo poo” to Siri in an interview with the Times Union.
Then, in July, Wozniak attached Jobs’ name to Microsoft’s unexpected entry to the tablet hardware market. Speaking at the Entel conference in Chile, he joked that Microsoft’s latest products were so impressive, it was like “Steve Jobs was reincarnated at Microsoft.” Video evidence is below:
