Currently on appeal from a ruling late in 2002, a lawsuit alleging retaliation against an employee who tried to take on inflated sales projections and actual figures at Mattel Incorporated shows that "Year of the Whistleblower" or not, 2002 did not smile on all do-gooders. Unlike the Enron, WorldCom, and FBI employees who ended up on the cover of Time Magazine, the financial analyst who went to Mattel President Ned Mansour with recommendations for putting a stop to the deliberate practice of misleading investors ended up having her lawsuit against retaliation dismissed. Although company documents showed that Mattel's repeated manufacture of clearly over-optimistic sale and profit projections was intentional, a California State Court judge ruled that the worker's activities were not sufficient enough, nor was the corporation's ensuing harassment of her severe enough to merit whistle-blower protections.
See "Former Mattel Employee's Battle Shows Whistle-Blowers Walking a Fine Line", MICHAEL HILTZIK, Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2003