Lockheed Martin Retaliation Suit Properly Barred, Fifth Circuit Says

Lockheed Martin Corp. convinced a federal appeals court to affirm the rejection of claims it retaliated against two former employees for their disclosures about potential fraud under a NASA contract.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed in a nonprecedential opinion that the doctrine of res judicata barred the claims. Res judicata bars all claims a plaintiff brought or could have brought in a prior suit that ended in a court’s final judgment.

The lower court, which granted Lockheed Martin summary judgment, properly applied a transactional test to find that the retaliation claims arose out of the ...