It happened to the chief financial officer of Motorola Inc. this year. And the lawsuit he filed afterward provides a rare peek into dysfunctional relationships at the top of a major company.
Motorola has gone so far as to claim it fired the CFO “for cause” - a term often reserved for suspected embezzlers - while the former executive says he was canned for blowing the whistle on big problems.
The case represents more trouble for the cell phone maker, which has been struggling with billion-dollar losses and laying off thousands of workers.
Paul Liska, 53, walked into a board subcommittee meeting Jan. [...]

Investors were largely unimpressed, and analysts pointed to deterioration in the Motorola units that have been propping up the dismally performing cell phone operations.
“Theres no turnaround yet. This is basically treading water more efficiently than they have in the past,” said analyst Ed Snyder at Charter Equity Research.
The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company reported a loss of $231 million, or 13 cents per share, for the first three months of the year. Thats wider than the loss of $194 million, or 9 cents per share, for the same quarter last year.
The loss for the latest quarter included charges of 5 cents per [...]

Sanjay Jhas compensation is made up of huge incentives the Schaumburg, Ill.-based company said it needed to offer to recruit an executive of his caliber to help lead a major restructuring effort. It comes as thousands of Motorola employees have been laid off because of mounting losses.
Jha was lured to Motorola last year from Qualcomm Inc., where he served as chief operating officer. He was brought in to run Motorolas badly wounded cell phone business, which the company plans to spin off but has been delaying because of its huge losses.
Jha, who leads Motorolas mobile devices division, has a big [...]

North Americas largest maker of telecommunications equipment posted a massive fourth-quarter loss as it recorded charges to reflect the shrinking value of its cell phone business. It also suspended its dividend, said its chief financial officer had left and gave a disappointing forecast for the current quarter.
Its stock tumbled as much as 15 percent.
Motorola made the first commercial cell phones in the U.S., and a few years ago had a huge hit with the Razr phone. But as fickle buyers have moved on, Motorolas fortunes have dwindled dramatically, with its cell phone revenue dropping 70 percent in two years. The [...]

In high-tech, Research In Motion Ltd. is locked in litigation with Motorola Inc. over patents central to wireless devices. And in the video game market, Konami Digital Entertainment, developer of “Rock Revolution,” is pushing a patent infringement case against Harmonix Music Systems, creator of the game “Rock Band,” and its corporate parents, MTV Networks and Viacom Inc.
Now the startup, Article One Partners, is offering a reward to anyone who can turn up evidence to settle whether the patents at the heart of these cases - along with a handful of other valuable, high-profile patents - are valid or not.
Article One [...]

In a round of layoffs, the company shed jobs in an effort to stay profitable. Motorola lost $397 million, or 18 cents per share, in the July-September period. It had earned $60 million, or 3 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.
Sales fell 15 percent to $7.48 billion.
The loss included 23 cents of charges, mostly for restructuring costs. Without the charges, Motorola would have earned 5 cents a share, reflecting unexpectedly strong results in its non-cell phone operations. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had on average expected the company to earn 2 cents per share on revenue [...]