Joyce v. General Motors Corp.

Michael Joyce (plaintiff), a GM (originally a defendant, later dismissed) employee, submitted an idea through GM's employee-suggestion program to reduce scrap metal, after first discussing it informally with his supervisor, Guisinger. GM later told Joyce that supervisor Donald Halsey had separately submitted the identical idea and paid Halsey over $12,000 for it; Joyce sued Halsey and department head Donald Tackett, alleging Halsey stole the idea through a chain running from Joyce to Guisinger to Tackett to Halsey, and later voluntarily dismissed GM from the suit. The trial court directed a verdict for the defendants, the court of appeals reversed, and the defendants appealed.