I don't know legally how it works, but my gut says if this is found to be a wrongful termination under state/local/FMLA, then it also stands to reason that this could also be a wrongful death. From 1960, but it covers this line of thinking wrt suicide: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Thank you for finding this, really helpful. I checked PACER and didn't realize it was filed in state court instead.
The complaint is speaking and it is aggressively written and, to my non-lawyer mind, pretty well drafted. If I were Mongo, I would be trying aggressively to settle this and make it go away.
If I were the parents, I would be trying very hard to force any other outcome, preferably one where Mongo pays the biggest public relations price possible for what they've done, assuming the allegations are true.
The way Mongo answers the complaint will be really instructive in figuring out how they intend to play this, and in whether they think there is some explanation that will make this seem less dire.
From their site: 'Employee mental health and wellbeing is another core focus at MongoDB. It’s important for us to help break the stigma around mental health and provide our employees with the support they need, especially at work. We are dedicated to providing our employees with valuable tools to face all of life’s challenges and offer mental health programs that provide confidential assistance from qualified professionals.'
I worked at a smallish startup where on the wall behind reception in huge raised letters. The owner had installed "company values" like trust accountability, ect. It was referred to internally as the "wall of lies" rather thab reception or lobby. The owner was a total sociopath.
And perhaps a controversial take but consider the counterfactual: Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave? Get a bad review or put on a PIP? It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
In civilized countries it is illegal to fire someone on sick leave, and I highly doubt you’d get a permit to fire someone who just got back from sick leave.
I've taken mental health leave (not due to a PIP) and my productivity before and after was significantly different. It was great for my employer that I took it. I'm quite sure I would've eventually ended up with a PIP if I hadn't taken it sooner myself, and the best remedy on a PIP would have been to take mental health leave. Not as a strategy as such, but literally because it would have been the best solution (and I think the only one).
Yes, exactly. Taking mental health leave should be seen as a positive step: an opportunity to overcome whatever difficulties you've been facing, leading to - amongst many other benefits - better performance at work.
Mental health problems are tricky; they tend to creep up on us gradually, and often some form of external trigger is needed in order to prompt us to seek help. So it shouldn't be at all surprising that an employee in receipt of a PIP might take mental health leave as part of a genuine effort to improve their situation.
gp's cynical "counterfactual" suggests that they view PIPs as being purely a sham, intended to always result in dismissal rather than improved performance. Now, that might occasionally be true - but we should be blaming the abusive employer (who is likely acting outside the law) in that situation, not the employee.
Sounds like the kind of thing a union or works counsil could help with: enforcing a fair policy. That and revisiting the concept of at-will employment.
Better way to look at it: why are people so afraid of losing their job, and how do we reasonably remove the fear of losing one? Denmark may provide some good guidance here, as they have a good balance between social welfare and protections and fostering a robust business environment
I suspect a major way for the U.S. would be the one mentioned in the article: make it so that losing your job doesn't mean losing your health insurance. That's a major additional stressor, particularly if someone loses their job because of an illness.
Of course, there's about a negative one thousand percent chance of something like that passing in the current political climate.
If neither option satisfies, we must go up the stack. There is something seriously wrong with a society that drives educated, productive adults to suicide.
The US is somewhere in the middle, right there with some European countries. It's hard to say what drives people over the edge. Surprisingly Uruguay is high up there but Uganda, Ghana and Colombia are low.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
It's not legal to fire an employee on a sick leave in our country. They have to come back to work and then you can fire them. The employer is not paying their wage during the sick leave anyway, they get money from the social and health insurances. So there is very little downside for the company to keeping the employee employed. And if they employee is somehow faking it, that's an issue to check for the insurance companies.
> It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
Maybe the companies should ask themselves very hard why this is happening.
Here's another controversial take: as long as healthcare is tied to employment, companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice. If they suck at their job, find them another one at the company -- there has to be something they can do in a company of 5k employees.
so you have guaranteed employment for life with the same company? that is about as radical as it gets. this would shoot the unemployment through the roof if I, as a business owner, am unable to fire anyone that I hire! health insurance or not, that is to radical for even the most "social" country in existence (or that previously existed)
You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
What changes between the countries is the hiring procedure.
US and UK companies mostly use a "hire anyone, keep the slightly useful ones for as long as they seem slightly useful, fire everyone else, fire them too, wash, rinse, repeat" narcissistic-sociopathic trial-and-error pseudo-method that's just guesswork dressed up as "choice".
French companies, and those in countries with similar preferences, take their time to very seriously vet the people they're hiring with a focus on the long term, and do it right from the start, following scientific hiring methodologies that leave little to no space for guesswork and gut feelings.
The result for the company is the same: the proper employee, at the proper position, doing the proper job the company needs.
The result for the employee is that the first "method", being as it is narcissistic-sociopathic, promotes unnecessary human suffering with zero actual benefit to anyone, whereas the second promotes well-being, satisfaction, and good work-life balance.
And, again, unemployment rates don't vary between them.
Now, if you believe your company would do badly under this system, maybe it would indeed. Which only goes to show you don't know how to hire properly. Start hiring better, and it'd make zero difference for you whether you're in a system or the other. In fact, start hiring better, and you may even move ahead compared to your narcissistic-sociopathic competitors, since then they will be the ones going with simple trial-and-error, while you will get the right employees from the start, and without regrets.
> You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
You might want to expand that to the youth unemployment rate.
> Youth Unemployment Rate in France decreased to 18.90 percent in October from 19 percent in September of 2025. Youth Unemployment Rate in France averaged 20.52 percent from 1983 until 2025, reaching an all time high of 28.20 percent in November of 2012 and a record low of 14.50 percent in February of 1983.
While the overall unemployment rate may be similar, the "hire them once and have to take exterodary action to fire them" significantly impacts the employment rate of college new graduates where it can be difficult to identify how well they actually work in the work force.
> ... High unemployment, especially for young immigrants, was seen as one of the driving forces behind the 2005 civil unrest in France and this unrest mobilized the perceived public urgency for the First Employment Contract. Youths are particularly at risk as they have been locked out of the same career opportunities as older workers, contributing to both a rise in tensions amongst the economically disenfranchised underclass, and, some claim, a brain drain of graduates leaving for better opportunities in Britain and the United States.
> French laws don’t recognize at-will employment. In France, you can’t simply dismiss an employee without reason. In fact, the French labor code makes it extremely clear that it considers termination to be an absolute last resort, especially in cases of voluntary or involuntary personal grounds for dismissal. Instead, it encourages employers to try to find other ways to resolve the problem. For example, let’s say the employee in question is having serious interpersonal issues with their manager or a coworker. You can only dismiss them after you’ve tried everything else, such as holding a meeting in which you talk to the two of them and try to find a solution, or by putting them on different projects so they don’t have to work together directly. If the company is putting technological changes in place to increase its competitiveness, before you can start the dismissal procedure, you must demonstrate you tried another course of action, such as redeployment or employee training.
> Everything must be documented. This is extremely important: You must document evidence of all events and/or incidents that led to the dismissal of the employee, even if the reasons have nothing to do with their conduct specifically. You’ll use this evidence both during the interview when you’re telling the employee why they’re being dismissed and should also keep it in case the employee decides to bring a lawsuit against your company.
---
If someone is having difficulty with their job, you first provide them training before you can fire them. From what I understand, it has to be a "we tried everything for the past year, here's all the documentation and they're still unable to do the basic requirements for the position.
There will always be people who abuse the system, no matter what system you have.
The solution is not to burn down all systems and just wild west everything. No. The solution is to anticipate the fraud, and build it into your margins and planning. Recognize it will always happen. And, in fact, the optimal amount of fraud is never zero. Because preventing fraud, too, has a cost, and it grows exponentially.
> An employer is prohibited from discriminating or retaliating against an employee or prospective employee for having exercised or attempted to exercise any FMLA right.
You can fire someone after they come back but you will need to show receipts. Your employer also doesn't pay you when you take that leave so it would be a strange way to game the system.
I know people who upon getting put into a PIP took a mental health leave as it took them over the PIP time horizon. The mileage you get from this will vary on organization —some won’t want the reputational hit, others won’t care though.
>Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
Yes, at least for companies the size of MongoDB
Didn't need much ruminating to come to that answer, but I lack the sociopathic behaviors necessary to run a corporation in the American legal environment.
But on Sept. 13, 2024, she attempted suicide again with the same lethal drug “citing the shame she felt at being fired by MongoDB,” according to the lawsuit.
Surman apparently regretted the decision and called 911 herself — but died on the way to the hospital.
Mongo later backtracked on an offer to retrieve Annie’s life insurance policy for the family, who believe the company fired Annie right before a mass layoff to avoid paying her severance, according to the suit.
MongoDB's behaviour just seems more and more callous...
How did that ever get approved? The person who wanted them fired is an asshole, that's given but this is multiple failures. So sad. It's just one employee let them take their leave, it's not worth the legal and now PR repercussions
This is sad and tragic but ultimately I don't think Mongo bares any responsibility here. If her partner left her while she was having a prolonged mental health crisis, would her partner be to blame for her suicide? I would argue: no.
I'm not American, and neither am I a lawyer, but the elephant in the room is that the workplace is responsible for health insurance, hence terminating her effectively removes her ability to get treatment, too.
Especially in this context, where she asked for at least a minor extension to finish her treatment.
I suspect the parents have a solid chance of winning this because the health insurance is linked, otherwise I'd completely agree with your opinion. An employer shouldn't be responsible for mothering their employees. It creates perverse incentives on both sides of the contract
Why shouldn't her medical providers be responsible for continuing critical health care regardless of payment? Why is it on the employer who is only tangentially related to this versus the people actually charging large sums of money for medically necessary treatment?
Also, the same health insurance can be continued after termination (with some external payment, of course) in addition to medicaid probably being available. None of that may be easy for someone with mental issues to navigate, but that is systematic.
As for the minor extension, is it clear how long she was on leave and what the conversation had been before the termination? The post said that they asked for small time extension, but did not give any indication as to what was happening before, neither length of time employed before taking the leave, what caused the leave, what was said in terms of a return, how long the absence was, etc. I feel like plugging in different answers for those questions would change how I feel about the culpability of the company in the current legal regime.
I feel sorry for this woman. Meta did this to me because they're discriminatory dicks, so I know how she felt. Fortunately, I have a tremendous amount of family support.
If you believe a person can drive another person suicide through how they act, I don’t see how this would be any different, especially since they both rely on power asymmetry. If we don’t want to hook MongoDB responsible in some manner than we need to remove that asymmetry
Define "drive". Correlation is not causation. It's difficult to anticipate the trigger for a particular action or choice when other circumstances or stressors may have more significant factors that contributed to the decision. After all, many have lost jobs without ending their own lives and many have killed themselves despite high-profile, gainful employment. Instead, holding MongoDB responsible risks incentivizing this company and others to turn away and preemptively furlough anyone remotely approaching the statistical profile of a suicide risk.
I don't know legally how it works, but my gut says if this is found to be a wrongful termination under state/local/FMLA, then it also stands to reason that this could also be a wrongful death. From 1960, but it covers this line of thinking wrt suicide: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Anyway here's the actual complaint (I read it after I wrote the above), I guess her parents/counsel thought the same thing: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docInde...
Thank you for finding this, really helpful. I checked PACER and didn't realize it was filed in state court instead.
The complaint is speaking and it is aggressively written and, to my non-lawyer mind, pretty well drafted. If I were Mongo, I would be trying aggressively to settle this and make it go away.
If I were the parents, I would be trying very hard to force any other outcome, preferably one where Mongo pays the biggest public relations price possible for what they've done, assuming the allegations are true.
The way Mongo answers the complaint will be really instructive in figuring out how they intend to play this, and in whether they think there is some explanation that will make this seem less dire.
From their site: 'Employee mental health and wellbeing is another core focus at MongoDB. It’s important for us to help break the stigma around mental health and provide our employees with the support they need, especially at work. We are dedicated to providing our employees with valuable tools to face all of life’s challenges and offer mental health programs that provide confidential assistance from qualified professionals.'
https://www.mongodb.com/company/blog/culture/employee-benefi...
Never trust this horseshit!
All public culture documents are bullshit. It always comes down to your direct manager and what they believe in.
And whether they have stones or not, or whether their manager is a bully, and so on and so on ...
I worked at a smallish startup where on the wall behind reception in huge raised letters. The owner had installed "company values" like trust accountability, ect. It was referred to internally as the "wall of lies" rather thab reception or lobby. The owner was a total sociopath.
Elephant in the room is that the healthcare is tied to the employment.
Sad.
And perhaps a controversial take but consider the counterfactual: Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave? Get a bad review or put on a PIP? It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
In civilized countries it is illegal to fire someone on sick leave, and I highly doubt you’d get a permit to fire someone who just got back from sick leave.
> It's already becoming a common strategy
I've taken mental health leave (not due to a PIP) and my productivity before and after was significantly different. It was great for my employer that I took it. I'm quite sure I would've eventually ended up with a PIP if I hadn't taken it sooner myself, and the best remedy on a PIP would have been to take mental health leave. Not as a strategy as such, but literally because it would have been the best solution (and I think the only one).
Yes, exactly. Taking mental health leave should be seen as a positive step: an opportunity to overcome whatever difficulties you've been facing, leading to - amongst many other benefits - better performance at work.
Mental health problems are tricky; they tend to creep up on us gradually, and often some form of external trigger is needed in order to prompt us to seek help. So it shouldn't be at all surprising that an employee in receipt of a PIP might take mental health leave as part of a genuine effort to improve their situation.
gp's cynical "counterfactual" suggests that they view PIPs as being purely a sham, intended to always result in dismissal rather than improved performance. Now, that might occasionally be true - but we should be blaming the abusive employer (who is likely acting outside the law) in that situation, not the employee.
Sounds like the kind of thing a union or works counsil could help with: enforcing a fair policy. That and revisiting the concept of at-will employment.
Yes. This is already the case in the E.U. and Australia.
Depending on the nature of the leave, this could've also been unlawful in the U.S. due to the Family Leave Act.
Better way to look at it: why are people so afraid of losing their job, and how do we reasonably remove the fear of losing one? Denmark may provide some good guidance here, as they have a good balance between social welfare and protections and fostering a robust business environment
I suspect a major way for the U.S. would be the one mentioned in the article: make it so that losing your job doesn't mean losing your health insurance. That's a major additional stressor, particularly if someone loses their job because of an illness.
Of course, there's about a negative one thousand percent chance of something like that passing in the current political climate.
If neither option satisfies, we must go up the stack. There is something seriously wrong with a society that drives educated, productive adults to suicide.
The US is somewhere in the middle, right there with some European countries. It's hard to say what drives people over the edge. Surprisingly Uruguay is high up there but Uganda, Ghana and Colombia are low.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
It's not legal to fire an employee on a sick leave in our country. They have to come back to work and then you can fire them. The employer is not paying their wage during the sick leave anyway, they get money from the social and health insurances. So there is very little downside for the company to keeping the employee employed. And if they employee is somehow faking it, that's an issue to check for the insurance companies.
> It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
Maybe the companies should ask themselves very hard why this is happening.
Here's another controversial take: as long as healthcare is tied to employment, companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice. If they suck at their job, find them another one at the company -- there has to be something they can do in a company of 5k employees.
this is too radical even for china or like good ol USSR… damn dude :)
"as long as healthcare is tied to employment" makes it barely radical at all.
so you have guaranteed employment for life with the same company? that is about as radical as it gets. this would shoot the unemployment through the roof if I, as a business owner, am unable to fire anyone that I hire! health insurance or not, that is to radical for even the most "social" country in existence (or that previously existed)
You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
What changes between the countries is the hiring procedure.
US and UK companies mostly use a "hire anyone, keep the slightly useful ones for as long as they seem slightly useful, fire everyone else, fire them too, wash, rinse, repeat" narcissistic-sociopathic trial-and-error pseudo-method that's just guesswork dressed up as "choice".
French companies, and those in countries with similar preferences, take their time to very seriously vet the people they're hiring with a focus on the long term, and do it right from the start, following scientific hiring methodologies that leave little to no space for guesswork and gut feelings.
The result for the company is the same: the proper employee, at the proper position, doing the proper job the company needs.
The result for the employee is that the first "method", being as it is narcissistic-sociopathic, promotes unnecessary human suffering with zero actual benefit to anyone, whereas the second promotes well-being, satisfaction, and good work-life balance.
And, again, unemployment rates don't vary between them.
Now, if you believe your company would do badly under this system, maybe it would indeed. Which only goes to show you don't know how to hire properly. Start hiring better, and it'd make zero difference for you whether you're in a system or the other. In fact, start hiring better, and you may even move ahead compared to your narcissistic-sociopathic competitors, since then they will be the ones going with simple trial-and-error, while you will get the right employees from the start, and without regrets.
> You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
You might want to expand that to the youth unemployment rate.
https://tradingeconomics.com/france/youth-unemployment-rate
> Youth Unemployment Rate in France decreased to 18.90 percent in October from 19 percent in September of 2025. Youth Unemployment Rate in France averaged 20.52 percent from 1983 until 2025, reaching an all time high of 28.20 percent in November of 2012 and a record low of 14.50 percent in February of 1983.
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/youth-unemployment... for the data by country. United States is at 10.6%.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14024887 for the US data (youth being defined as 16 - 24 in that data set)
---
While the overall unemployment rate may be similar, the "hire them once and have to take exterodary action to fire them" significantly impacts the employment rate of college new graduates where it can be difficult to identify how well they actually work in the work force.
That can also lead to some social instability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_youth_protests_in_France
> ... High unemployment, especially for young immigrants, was seen as one of the driving forces behind the 2005 civil unrest in France and this unrest mobilized the perceived public urgency for the First Employment Contract. Youths are particularly at risk as they have been locked out of the same career opportunities as older workers, contributing to both a rise in tensions amongst the economically disenfranchised underclass, and, some claim, a brain drain of graduates leaving for better opportunities in Britain and the United States.
under what law/statute/etc... in France is forbidden to fire an employee? a link to this law for my education would be greatly appreciated...
This gets into "my French is rusty... and legal French is non-existent".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_(employment)_in_Fran...
https://www.rippling.com/blog/termination-in-france
In particular the parts:
> French laws don’t recognize at-will employment. In France, you can’t simply dismiss an employee without reason. In fact, the French labor code makes it extremely clear that it considers termination to be an absolute last resort, especially in cases of voluntary or involuntary personal grounds for dismissal. Instead, it encourages employers to try to find other ways to resolve the problem. For example, let’s say the employee in question is having serious interpersonal issues with their manager or a coworker. You can only dismiss them after you’ve tried everything else, such as holding a meeting in which you talk to the two of them and try to find a solution, or by putting them on different projects so they don’t have to work together directly. If the company is putting technological changes in place to increase its competitiveness, before you can start the dismissal procedure, you must demonstrate you tried another course of action, such as redeployment or employee training.
> Everything must be documented. This is extremely important: You must document evidence of all events and/or incidents that led to the dismissal of the employee, even if the reasons have nothing to do with their conduct specifically. You’ll use this evidence both during the interview when you’re telling the employee why they’re being dismissed and should also keep it in case the employee decides to bring a lawsuit against your company.
---
If someone is having difficulty with their job, you first provide them training before you can fire them. From what I understand, it has to be a "we tried everything for the past year, here's all the documentation and they're still unable to do the basic requirements for the position.
If you're looking for reading comprehension lessons, I don't provide such services.
ugh that is too bad, Sundays are always good for learning new things
There will always be people who abuse the system, no matter what system you have.
The solution is not to burn down all systems and just wild west everything. No. The solution is to anticipate the fraud, and build it into your margins and planning. Recognize it will always happen. And, in fact, the optimal amount of fraud is never zero. Because preventing fraud, too, has a cost, and it grows exponentially.
Yes. This is The Family and Medical Leave Act.
> An employer is prohibited from discriminating or retaliating against an employee or prospective employee for having exercised or attempted to exercise any FMLA right.
You can fire someone after they come back but you will need to show receipts. Your employer also doesn't pay you when you take that leave so it would be a strange way to game the system.
I know people who upon getting put into a PIP took a mental health leave as it took them over the PIP time horizon. The mileage you get from this will vary on organization —some won’t want the reputational hit, others won’t care though.
>Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
Yes, at least for companies the size of MongoDB
Didn't need much ruminating to come to that answer, but I lack the sociopathic behaviors necessary to run a corporation in the American legal environment.
from NY Post, https://nypost.com/2025/12/27/us-news/nyc-woman-driven-to-su...
MongoDB's behaviour just seems more and more callous...Really quite nasty of the company.
How did that ever get approved? The person who wanted them fired is an asshole, that's given but this is multiple failures. So sad. It's just one employee let them take their leave, it's not worth the legal and now PR repercussions
This is sad, and if true as presented a big suit for MongoDB
This is sad and tragic but ultimately I don't think Mongo bares any responsibility here. If her partner left her while she was having a prolonged mental health crisis, would her partner be to blame for her suicide? I would argue: no.
I'm not American, and neither am I a lawyer, but the elephant in the room is that the workplace is responsible for health insurance, hence terminating her effectively removes her ability to get treatment, too.
Especially in this context, where she asked for at least a minor extension to finish her treatment.
I suspect the parents have a solid chance of winning this because the health insurance is linked, otherwise I'd completely agree with your opinion. An employer shouldn't be responsible for mothering their employees. It creates perverse incentives on both sides of the contract
Why shouldn't her medical providers be responsible for continuing critical health care regardless of payment? Why is it on the employer who is only tangentially related to this versus the people actually charging large sums of money for medically necessary treatment?
Also, the same health insurance can be continued after termination (with some external payment, of course) in addition to medicaid probably being available. None of that may be easy for someone with mental issues to navigate, but that is systematic.
As for the minor extension, is it clear how long she was on leave and what the conversation had been before the termination? The post said that they asked for small time extension, but did not give any indication as to what was happening before, neither length of time employed before taking the leave, what caused the leave, what was said in terms of a return, how long the absence was, etc. I feel like plugging in different answers for those questions would change how I feel about the culpability of the company in the current legal regime.
I feel sorry for this woman. Meta did this to me because they're discriminatory dicks, so I know how she felt. Fortunately, I have a tremendous amount of family support.
I think the Head of HR should face legal repercussions and have a full audit. I guarantee you that they have committed other crimes....
I’m not sure about third party responsibility for suicide. It’s a horrible, tragic situation.
If you believe a person can drive another person suicide through how they act, I don’t see how this would be any different, especially since they both rely on power asymmetry. If we don’t want to hook MongoDB responsible in some manner than we need to remove that asymmetry
Define "drive". Correlation is not causation. It's difficult to anticipate the trigger for a particular action or choice when other circumstances or stressors may have more significant factors that contributed to the decision. After all, many have lost jobs without ending their own lives and many have killed themselves despite high-profile, gainful employment. Instead, holding MongoDB responsible risks incentivizing this company and others to turn away and preemptively furlough anyone remotely approaching the statistical profile of a suicide risk.