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GILLETTEMEDIATION · ARBITRATION
← All verdictsAugust 6, 2026

Byrne v. Ameris Bank: How a Founder’s Wage Complaints Became a $79.5 Million Whistleblower Judgment

jury verdictcaliforniaemployment law verdictwhistleblower retaliationwrongful terminationpunitive damageswage and houremployment lawemployment law trial

Executive Summary

On July 27, 2026, Judge Michelle Williams Court entered final judgment of $79,548,170.80 in favor of Patrick Byrne, the founder and former chief executive of Balboa Capital, and against Ameris Bank in Byrne v. Ameris Bank, No. 8:24-cv-01989-MWC (JDEx) (C.D. Cal.). The judgment followed a trifurcated trial in which a unanimous jury answered every question it reached on a 28-question special verdict form in Byrne’s favor, finding Ameris liable for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy, whistleblower retaliation under California Labor Code section 1102.5, failure to pay all wages due at termination, and breach of contract, and finding that Ameris acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. A second jury phase awarded $62,906,613 in punitive damages, and a third, bench phase found Ameris liable under California’s Unfair Competition Law while declining to award duplicative restitution.

Category Amount / Disposition
Past economic loss (jury, Phase 1) $9,000,000.00
Future economic loss (jury, Phase 1) $6,300,000.00
Past non-economic loss (jury, Phase 1) $525,000.00
Future non-economic loss (jury, Phase 1) $700,000.00
Waiting-time penalties (as entered; Lab. Code § 203 30-day maximum) $116,557.80
Compensatory total (judgment) $16,641,557.80
Punitive damages (jury, Phase 2) $62,906,613.00
UCL § 17200 (bench, Phase 3) Liability found; no restitution awarded
Total judgment (July 27, 2026) $79,548,170.80
Jury verdicts as returned (before § 203 conformance) $82,190,147.60
Prejudgment interest (10% on $9,000,000 from filing) Approx. $1.67 million

The verdict forms tell a story the press coverage missed: the jury’s verdicts totaled $82,190,147.60. The judgment entered a lower figure because Labor Code section 203 caps waiting-time penalties at 30 days’ wages, and the court conformed the jury’s 710-day predicate finding to the statutory maximum. The judgment adds 10 percent prejudgment interest on the $9 million past economic award from the filing date (roughly $1.67 million), post-judgment interest, and costs, with a fee motion to follow. Ameris has disclosed an $82.5 million pre-tax litigation accrual and has stated it intends to appeal.

Case Information

Case: Byrne v. Ameris Bank, No. 8:24-cv-01989-MWC (JDEx) (C.D. Cal.), filed September 16, 2024

Court: United States District Court for the Central District of California, Hon. Michelle Williams Court; discovery matters before Magistrate Judge John D. Early

Matter: Whistleblower retaliation and wage litigation under California law, heard in federal court on diversity jurisdiction: wrongful discharge in violation of public policy; retaliation under Cal. Lab. Code § 1102.5; nonpayment of wages and waiting-time penalties under Cal. Lab. Code §§ 201, 203; breach of contract; and a bench-tried claim under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200

Trial: Eight trial days between June 2 and June 12, 2026, in three phases; Phase 1 verdict June 11, 2026; Phase 2 (punitive) verdict June 12, 2026; Phase 3 findings of fact and conclusions of law June 29, 2026; final judgment July 27, 2026

Related case: Ameris Bank v. Byrne, No. 8:26-cv-00393-MWC (JDEx) (C.D. Cal.), the bank’s follow-on trade secret and breach of contract action, discussed below

Parties

Plaintiff. Patrick Byrne founded Balboa Capital, a Costa Mesa, California equipment leasing company, in 1988 and was its sole owner from 2015 until its sale. After Ameris Bank acquired Balboa Capital in December 2021, Byrne remained as chief executive of the newly formed Balboa Division under a multi-year employment agreement.

Defendant. Ameris Bank is a Georgia corporation and a wholly owned subsidiary of Ameris Bancorp (NYSE: ABCB).

Counsel

  • Trial counsel for Plaintiff: Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP (Irvine): Matthew T. Sessions (lead trial counsel), Stacey A. Villagomez, Madison E. Larsen, Andrew A. Wood, Jordan Victor, Michael D. Gates, and Sean K. Bloks

  • The original complaint was filed by Esperanza Cervantes Anderson, Law Office of Esperanza Anderson, with T. Stephen Corcoran, Pierce Davis & Perritano LLP; Allen Matkins substituted in as counsel of record in December 2025

  • Trial counsel for Defendant: Nukk-Freeman & Cerra, P.C.: Stacy L. Fode and Nana J. Yee (San Diego), with Zachary Brower and Kirsten McCaw Grossman (Chatham, New Jersey, admitted pro hac vice)

  • Post-judgment appellate appearances for Defendant: Complex Appellate Litigation Group LLP: Johanna S. Schiavoni, Michael J. von Loewenfeldt, and Jessica M. Weisel

Key Findings and Verdict

  • The Phase 1 jury found for Byrne on all four claims submitted: wrongful discharge in violation of public policy, retaliation in violation of Labor Code § 1102.5, failure to pay all wages due at termination, and breach of contract (Dkt. 227)

  • On causation, the jury found Byrne’s wage complaints were a “substantial motivating reason” for his discharge on the public policy claim and a “contributing factor” on the § 1102.5 claim, and found that Ameris failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that it would have discharged Byrne anyway for legitimate, independent reasons (Lab. Code § 1102.6)

  • The jury found Ameris willfully failed to pay all wages due at termination, and made predicate findings of 710 days of continued nonpayment at a daily wage of $3,885.26; the court, which had reserved the penalty amount to itself, entered $116,557.80, the 30-day statutory maximum under Labor Code § 203

  • The Phase 1 jury found by clear and convincing evidence that Ameris engaged in the conduct with malice, oppression, or fraud through an officer, director, or managing agent, and the Phase 2 jury awarded $62,906,613 in punitive damages, roughly 3.8 times the compensatory award as entered

  • In Phase 3, the court found Ameris violated the UCL under both the “unlawful” and “unfair” prongs but exercised its discretion not to award restitution, holding Byrne had an adequate remedy at law and that waiting-time penalties are not restitutionary (Dkt. 246)

  • Final judgment: $79,548,170.80, plus prejudgment interest at 10 percent on the $9 million past economic award from the filing date, post-judgment interest under 28 U.S.C. § 1961, and costs, with a fee motion permitted under Rule 54(d)(2) (Dkt. 253)

Factual Background

1988 to December 2021: founding and sale. Byrne founded Balboa Capital in 1988 and led it for more than three decades. On December 10, 2021, Byrne and Ameris executed a stock purchase agreement under which Ameris acquired 100 percent of Balboa Capital for approximately $186 million. Byrne stayed on as chief executive of the new Balboa Division under an employment agreement that incorporated the Balboa Capital Long-Term Cash Incentive Plan (LTIP) as a distinct component of his compensation. The LTIP funded an annual bonus pool with 35 percent of the division’s earnings before tax above a threshold, measured against an operating model built on Balboa’s pre-acquisition financials, with awards certified by Ameris’s compensation committee and payable by March 15 of the following year. The plan gave the committee authority to construe its provisions, made committee decisions “final and binding,” provided that no right to an award exists until it is paid, and permitted delegation of plan administration, which the committee delegated to the Ameris executive who oversaw the division.

2022: the plan’s first year. The division met its 2022 target. Ameris paid an LTIP pool of approximately $9 million, and in February 2023 Byrne received a 2022 award of more than $5.6 million, over 62 percent of the pool, an allocation made on his own recommendation.

2023: the calculation dispute. In April 2023, Ameris’s director of accounting sent Byrne a preliminary first-quarter estimate showing the division missing its LTIP target. Beginning in mid-2023, Byrne challenged Ameris’s calculation methodology across seven categories: overhead allocations, repossession accounting, depreciation of pre-acquisition assets, charge-offs, tax benefits, stipulated judgments, and interim rents. He contended the methodology departed from the LTIP’s key assumptions, the operating model, and pre-acquisition allocation practices, and that the departures shorted him and other division employees; a June 2023 email sought to “add back” more than $3 million he asserted was improperly allocated to overhead. Ameris’s accounting leadership responded that Byrne’s proposed revisions were inconsistent with GAAP, the company’s accounting controls, and the plan’s terms, and Ameris ultimately concluded the division missed the 2023 threshold, funding no 2023 pool.

January to June 2024: demands and termination. In January 2024, Byrne demanded $3,037,750 for the 2023 LTIP, then $1,457,057 on a revised 2022 calculation, and $2,024,765 on a security-deposit accounting issue. Ameris responded in February 2024 that, after two adjustments it did make, the division remained below threshold and nothing further was owed. That same month Byrne emailed the division’s eleven-member management team airing his disagreement with the calculations. In March 2024 he characterized roughly $6.5 million as past due. Ameris’s account of the same period, developed in the summary judgment record, emphasized documented performance concerns: the division’s 2023 results, loan losses, strained working relationships across the organization, and friction over accounting controls, alongside review language stating Ameris hoped Byrne would continue in a long-term leadership role. On March 7, 2024, Ameris gave notice it would not renew the employment agreement expiring at year end, and days later offered Byrne a severance protection and restrictive covenants agreement he never signed. Ameris terminated Byrne’s employment by notice dated June 27, 2024, effective June 30, 2024, designating the termination as without cause.

September 16, 2024: the lawsuit. Byrne sued in the Central District of California, originally asserting four causes of action: wrongful discharge in violation of public policy, retaliation under Labor Code § 1102.5, failure to pay all wages due at termination under §§ 201 through 203, and violation of the UCL. In December 2025, Allen Matkins substituted in as Byrne’s counsel, and the court denied an ex parte request for leave to amend the complaint.

February 13, 2026: summary judgment narrows one theory. The court denied Ameris’s summary judgment motion in nearly all respects. It held the LTIP award is properly considered incentive compensation that constitutes “wages” under Schachter v. Citigroup, Inc., 47 Cal. 4th 610 (2009), if the conditions precedent were satisfied; found triable issues on whether Ameris’s EBT methodology complied with the plan; and concluded a reasonable jury could find the delegated administrator’s determinations were not final and binding. It declined to find a good-faith wage dispute as a matter of law, and sustained the § 1102.5 claim, reasoning that Byrne’s continuous complaints from mid-2023 through May 2024 supported causation and noting the “without cause” designation in connection with the same-decision defense. The lone grant: the 2024 LTIP award could not be recovered as unpaid wages, because nothing was due until the following year.

May 21, 2026: pretrial rulings. In an omnibus order, the court declined to exclude Byrne’s forensic accounting expert despite a conceded failure to timely serve her report, finding the lapse harmless under Rule 37(c)(1), with exclusion a disfavored, near-case-dispositive sanction. Both sides’ Daubert motions were granted only in part: neither expert could offer contract interpretation or other legal conclusions, but both could testify to GAAP and industry standards. The court also denied Ameris’s motion to exclude all references to the 2024 LTIP as overbroad, holding the evidence remained admissible for lost future earnings, motive, and damages context notwithstanding the summary judgment ruling.

June 2 to June 15, 2026: a trial in three phases. The jury heard eight trial days between June 2 and June 12. On June 10, with leave of court, Byrne filed a First Amended Complaint mid-trial, and the case went to the jury on four claims including breach of contract; the instructions framed the contract claim as covering the 2022, 2023, and 2024 plan years. Ameris’s instructed defenses included good-faith dispute, failure to mitigate, and after-acquired evidence based on allegations that Byrne forwarded confidential documents to his personal email. The Phase 1 verdict came June 11, the Phase 2 punitive verdict June 12, and the court issued Phase 3 findings on the UCL claim June 29. Over Ameris’s objection to the form of judgment and its prejudgment interest provision, the court entered judgment on July 27 substantially as Byrne proposed.

Post-judgment posture. In its second-quarter 2026 disclosures, Ameris Bancorp reported an $82.5 million pre-tax litigation accrual covering the verdict and related costs and stated it intends to appeal; three appellate specialists from Complex Appellate Litigation Group appeared for the bank in early August. On July 28, the court denied Ameris’s motion to place all trial demonstratives, including closing PowerPoints, into the record. Cost and fee applications, and any Rule 50(b) or Rule 59 motions, are due in the weeks following judgment.

Analysis

The verdict number nobody reported.

Every press account of this case reports the $79.5 million judgment. None reports the jury’s actual verdicts, which totaled $82,190,147.60. The difference is Labor Code § 203. The Phase 1 verdict form asked the jury two predicate questions on the waiting-time claim: for how many calendar days Ameris willfully failed to pay all wages after Byrne’s last day (the jury answered 710) and Byrne’s daily wage rate (the jury answered $3,885.26). Multiplied out, those findings come to $2,758,534.60, and the court’s Phase 3 findings recite that figure as part of the jury’s award. But the jury instructions expressly reserved the penalty amount to the court (“I will decide the amount of the penalty, if any, to be imposed”), and § 203 stops the penalty clock at 30 days. The judgment accordingly entered 30 days at the found daily rate, $116,557.80, trimming roughly $2.64 million between verdict and judgment.

The practitioner point is verdict-form architecture. The form treated the day count and the daily rate as predicate factual findings and left the statutory arithmetic to the court, which avoided any argument that the jury awarded an unlawful penalty. The choice is invisible unless you read the verdict form, the instructions, and the judgment together. This blog has traced how statutory structure quietly reshapes employment verdicts in Garcia v. Walmart, where a Title VII-only submission collapsed a $23 million verdict to $300,000, and in Hender v. Nike, where statutory track selection determined which of two punitive awards was capped. Byrne is a third variation: here the only cap in the case was a 30-day penalty window, it did its modest work between verdict and judgment, and the nine-figure exposure ran through tracks with no cap at all.

Incentive compensation as wages: discretion clauses meet Schachter.

The doctrinal holding with the longest reach came at summary judgment. Ameris argued the LTIP awards were discretionary bonuses, not wages, pointing to plan language making compensation committee decisions “final and binding” and providing that a participant has no right to an award until it is paid. The court held the LTIP is incentive compensation within the broad definition of wages under Schachter v. Citigroup, Inc., 47 Cal. 4th 610, 618 (2009), and Neisendorf v. Levi Strauss & Co., 143 Cal. App. 4th 509, 522 (2006): once a bonus is promised as compensation and the employee satisfies the agreed conditions, the promised bonus is wages that must be paid. Whether the conditions were satisfied, and whether Ameris’s EBT methodology honored the plan’s own key assumptions, were jury questions, and a reasonable jury could find the delegated administrator’s determinations were not final and binding where the plan guaranteed awards whenever thresholds were met.

For compensation counsel on both sides, the lesson is that a written, formula-driven plan is a double-edged instrument. The formula that gives an employer objectivity also gives a plaintiff a yardstick: every departure from the plan’s stated assumptions becomes a jury argument about earned and unpaid wages, with waiting-time penalties and a willfulness finding riding along. The good-faith dispute defense to § 203 penalties (8 Cal. Code Regs. § 13520) could not be resolved in Ameris’s favor as a matter of law, and the jury ultimately found the failure to pay willful. Employers administering plans of this kind should expect the plan document, the model it references, and the paper trail of calculation disputes to be the central trial exhibits.

Lawson’s framework did the heavy lifting.

The retaliation claim ran through the statutory burden-shifting framework of Labor Code § 1102.6 as construed in Lawson v. PPG Architectural Finishes, Inc., 12 Cal. 5th 703 (2022): the plaintiff proves protected disclosure was a contributing factor by a preponderance, and the employer then must prove by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the same action anyway for legitimate, independent reasons. The instructions captured how plaintiff-friendly that framework is in practice. A contributing factor is any factor which, alone or with others, tends to affect the outcome. A disclosure is protected even though making it is part of the employee’s job duties, and even though the employer already knew the information. And the employee need not prove an actual violation of law, only a reasonable belief; at summary judgment the court reasoned that because withholding earned wages is unlawful, Byrne’s belief was not unreasonable.

The verdict form shows where the case was won and lost. The jury found Byrne’s complaints a contributing factor, then answered no on the dispositive same-decision question. Ameris had documented performance concerns in the 2023 review, but it had also designated the termination as without cause, a label the court flagged at summary judgment and one that sits uneasily beside a same-decision narrative built on misconduct and performance. Ameris also carried an after-acquired evidence defense to trial, based on allegations that Byrne emailed himself confidential documents; the instruction would have cut off damages at the date of discovery had the defense been established, the special verdict contains no question on it, and the jury’s award of $6.3 million in future economic loss is difficult to reconcile with any finding that Ameris carried it. For defense counsel, Byrne is a reminder that under § 1102.6 the same-decision defense is a clear-and-convincing showing made to a jury that has already found retaliatory contribution, and that contemporaneous, cause-based documentation is what gives that showing any chance.

An uncapped punitive track.

Readers of this blog’s Garcia and Hender coverage will recognize the structural contrast. In Garcia, a Title VII-only jury submission ran the punitive and compensatory award into the $300,000 cap of 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3)(D). In Hender, parallel federal and Oregon tracks produced one capped and one uncapped punitive award. Byrne presented pure California claims in federal court on diversity jurisdiction, and no statute capped anything except the 30-day waiting-time window. The $62,906,613 punitive award, found after a dedicated second phase with financial-condition evidence, stands in the judgment exactly as the jury returned it.

Two features matter for the appeal Ameris has promised. First, the punitive predicate was tried to the demanding entity standard: clear and convincing evidence that an officer, director, or managing agent committed, authorized, or ratified conduct amounting to malice, oppression, or fraud, with managing agent defined as someone whose decisions ultimately determine corporate policy. Second, the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages as entered is roughly 3.8 to 1 (about 3.3 to 1 against the jury’s compensatory verdict before the § 203 conformance), within the single-digit range the Supreme Court identified as ordinarily consistent with due process in State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 425 (2003). A ratio attack is therefore uphill; expect the fight to center on the sufficiency of the managing-agent and malice findings and on trial rulings.

The 2024 LTIP: claim routing after a partial defense win.

The most instructive procedural thread concerns the 2024 plan year. At summary judgment Ameris won its only point: because Byrne was terminated in June 2024 and no 2024 award was due until the following year, the 2024 LTIP could not be recovered as unpaid wages under §§ 201 through 203. That looked like a meaningful damages limitation. It was not. The court denied Ameris’s motion in limine to exclude 2024 LTIP references as overbroad, holding the evidence admissible for lost future earnings, motive, and damages context. Mid-trial, with leave of court, Byrne filed a First Amended Complaint, and the breach of contract claim went to the jury covering the 2022, 2023, and 2024 plan years, supported by the plan term entitling a participant terminated without cause to his full award for the year if the division met its targets. The court’s Phase 3 findings confirm the result: the jury’s $9 million past economic loss award includes damages for breach of the 2024 LTIP, alongside the court’s own finding that $3,234,276 in earned 2022 and 2023 LTIP wages were owed at termination.

The lesson is that the same dollars can travel through different doctrinal doors. The wage-statute route carries penalties and a willfulness finding but requires the wages to have been due at termination; the contract route has no such timing limit and, through the without-cause clause, captured the year the statute could not reach. A summary judgment win that closes one route is worth little if the pleadings can be conformed to route the dollars through another, and the December 2025 denial of leave to amend followed by the June 2026 mid-trial grant shows how differently that request can land once the proof is in.

Preserved issues: prejudgment interest and the record on appeal.

Two post-trial orders deserve attention from anyone tracking the appeal. First, Ameris’s objection to the proposed judgment squarely contested the prejudgment interest award: it argued that interest on unliquidated contract damages is discretionary under Civil Code § 3287(b) and requires a motion Byrne never filed; that interest on the 2024 LTIP component cannot logically run from the September 2024 filing date when that payment was not even allegedly due until March 15, 2025; and that under Civil Code § 3288, prejudgment interest on tort damages is for the jury, which was never asked. The court entered the provision as proposed, awarding 10 percent per annum on the full $9 million past economic award from the filing date, approximately $1.67 million through judgment. Because the $9 million is a lump sum spanning contract and tort theories, the allocation problem the objection identifies is genuine and cleanly preserved; a verdict form separating contract wages from tort economic loss would have avoided it.

Second, six weeks after the verdict, Ameris moved to require both parties to produce and file every PowerPoint and demonstrative shown to the jury, citing the public’s right of access and the need for a complete appellate record. The court denied the motion under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 10(e): demonstratives are not evidence and not part of the record on appeal, Ameris did not explain why any particular slide was material or would aid the Ninth Circuit, and opening and closing slides are pure attorney argument. The takeaway for trial teams is unforgiving: if a demonstrative matters to an appellate issue, secure its place in the record contemporaneously, with authority, not by omnibus motion after judgment.

Acquisition aftermath, round two.

Like Propel Fuels, Inc. v. Phillips 66 Co., this case belongs to a growing file of acquisition-aftermath litigation, where the disputes that follow a deal (founder retention compensation here, trade secrets there) dwarf the integration issues the parties planned for. And the aftermath has a second front. In February 2026, while Byrne’s case was heading to trial, Ameris sued Byrne in the same district: Ameris Bank v. Byrne, No. 8:26-cv-00393-MWC (JDEx) (C.D. Cal.), asserting trade secret misappropriation and related claims arising from the same document-forwarding allegations that underlay its after-acquired evidence defense. The case was transferred to Judge Court as related, and on July 9, 2026, the court granted in part Byrne’s motion to dismiss: the trade secret misappropriation claims, the California Penal Code § 502 claim, and a conversion claim directed at customer and employee personal information were dismissed with leave to amend, while breach of contract claims based on a confidentiality agreement and acceptable use policy, and a conversion claim for a company laptop, survived.

One ruling in that order shows the first case’s verdict already at work. The court dismissed, without leave to amend, Ameris’s breach of contract claim premised on Byrne’s employment agreement, holding that the Phase 3 finding that Byrne substantially performed his obligations under the employment agreement and LTIP is binding on the parties as a matter of issue preclusion. A verdict of this size is not only a judgment; it is a set of adjudicated facts that will follow the parties through every related proceeding. Ameris filed an amended complaint in late July, and the court has referred the follow-on case to private mediation to be completed by May 2027.

Documents

Primary case documents for readers who want to review the record. Two trial documents, the omnibus order on motions in limine and the Phase 1 jury instructions, are not publicly posted on RECAP; PDFs of both are hosted here.

This post is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Case information is drawn from the public docket and filings in Byrne v. Ameris Bank, No. 8:24-cv-01989-MWC (JDEx) (C.D. Cal.), and Ameris Bank v. Byrne, No. 8:26-cv-00393-MWC (JDEx) (C.D. Cal.), and from public company disclosures and press reports as noted. The judgment is subject to post-trial motions and appeal. Gillette Mediation is a neutral and takes no position on the merits of this or any other pending matter.

Case digests are provided for general information for the litigation bar and are not legal advice. Summaries are drawn from public reports of verdicts and settlements and may not reflect subsequent post-trial motions, appeals, or reductions.