Decision to strike $125,000 verdict against employer for fraud in hiring upheld

In Cohn v. Knowledge Connections, Inc., the Virginia Supreme Court in an opinion by Justice Agee agreed with the trial court that the plaintiff had failed to prove fraud in her suit claiming that she was induced to quit her old job in order to go work for the defendant, which then refused to hire her.

This is an interesting opinion, and it is interesting that the opinion never makes any mention of Sea-Land v. O'Neal, 224 Va. 343, 355, 297 S.E.2d 647 (1982), which is the only case where a plaintiff was somehow able to when on one of these fraudulent inducement to leave the old job theories, all the rest were losers. The Sea-Land case is easy to remember because it is one of the few of the "name" cases where the employer is the appellant, the first name in the style of the case. (O'Neal also got $125,000.)