A chief financial officer for Motorola who was fired this year after he warned that the outfit was in for a rough ride has sued the company for wrongful dismissal.

Paul Liska, 53, was fired "for cause" which is a term used in the business world where the company claims that you have been nicking the tea money. However he claims that he was fired because he blew the whistle on big problems at the company.  Liska made a presentation which showed how grim things were at Motorola's mobile phone division.   He was told by a board member that he stirred a hornet's nest at that meeting.

He had thought that the board would axe the head of Motorola's mobile phone division, Sanjay Jha instead they decided to stick his head on a plate instead. The presentation showed that Mobile Devices, missed its sales projection for the preceding three months. This was because the head of the department made some rosy assumptions and had no forecast made for 2010.

Liska warned the board that with each passing day, Mobile Devices was making commitments and decisions "that will be increasingly costly to unwind should the board later decide on a different strategy."  Jha was recruited by Motorola last August to head Mobile Devices and make it an independent company.

Motorola's defence is that Liska knew he was on his way out, and he tried to extort the company by setting himself up as a whistle-blower who was being fired for speaking out. All that really has happened is that it has shown that there is all sorts of political infighting at Motorola as the company suffers.