A software company fired a sales representative for poor performance. The same day, July  2, but after the rep had been fired, the company closed a deal on which the rep had been working. The company refused to pay the rep a commission on the sale. He sued; he won; the appeals court affirmed.

Why did the sales rep win? Because the company's sales compensation plan said that the rep would be paid on deals closed as of the date of termination, not on deals closed before termination:

If an Area Vice President’s employment with Open Solutions is terminated, either
voluntarily or involuntarily, all of the employee’s closed orders as of their
termination date will be reviewed for calculation of commission payments based on
their status as of that date. . . . Only the amount due to be paid at termination will be
paid. No additional amounts will be paid after termination

Eungard v. Open Solutions, Inc., No. 06-2380 (6th Cir. Feb. 26, 2008), at 3. The company tried to argue that the date of termination really meant the time of termination; both the trial court and appeals court disagreed.

Interestingly, the court noted that "[f]or reasons that remain unclear," the company and its customer backdated their signatures to June 30. Id. at 2. One strongly suspects that the court was being tactful; the obvious reason for backdating signatures is because the company wants to include the sale in its results for the just-ended quarter. This is a spectacularly bad idea, of course; the former CEO of Computer Associates is spending 12 years in prison for doing that. As another example, in 2003, the former CFO of Media Vision Technology was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, and the former CEO (who cooperated with authorities) to 30 months, in part for falsely reporting sales numbers based on backdated contracts.