CHICAGO — March 3, 2026. Kathryn Born, a former training and communications manager at AbbVie, has filed a federal retaliatory discharge lawsuit alleging she was placed on a performance improvement plan and terminated after raising concerns about what she describes as functional deficiencies and public representations of an internal research and development data platform known as ARCH.
The Second Amended Complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that internal and public communications overstated the ARCH platform’s self-service capabilities and adoption across research and development teams. According to the filing, the plaintiff reported what she characterized as “functional deficiencies” and a hostile work environment to Human Resources and later to the company’s Office of Ethics and Compliance before being placed on a 45-day performance improvement plan and subsequently terminated prior to its completion.
The plaintiff, an artist, humanitarian activist, and instructor of a class titled “ChatGPT and the Human Resistance,” alleges that the stress of the situation, combined with the loss of employment, had lasting professional and financial consequences, including disruption to her nonprofit humanitarian work supporting queer and trans refugees in South Sudan and delayed their campaign “Clean Water is Healthcare. Nutrition is Medicine.”
Seeking to demystify complex whistleblower and retaliation law for a general audience, she has developed a Toy Puppet Theater production that dramatizes portions of her publicly filed complaint using symbolic “totem animal” composite characters rather than real names. The production presents excerpts from the publicly available court filings in a simplified narrative format intended to make federal litigation understandable to individuals considering reporting workplace misconduct.
In researching broader issues surrounding corporate representations of artificial intelligence, the plaintiff reviewed recent enforcement actions by the SEC involving so-called “AI washing,” in which investment firms were penalized for marketing AI capabilities that were not actually being used as described. She states that, based on her understanding at the time, she believed certain representations about the ARCH platform warranted internal review, and that she was not able to create training modules on “broken workflows.”
Employment retaliation claims often turn on whether decision-makers had knowledge of protected activity at the time of termination. The case also intersects with broader discussions about internal data governance, the complexity of Real-World data, and corporate communication practices, and how anti-retaliation policies function in practice within highly regulated industries.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and demands a jury trial. AbbVie has not yet filed its response to the Second Amended Complaint.
This press release summarizes allegations contained in publicly filed court documents. The claims described are allegations, and the defendant denies liability.
Media contact: Kathryn Born
kathryn@dusoma.com