If you work at Google and one of the founding employees of the mega search engine company starts calling you “obsolete” and “too old to matter,” your days may be numbered.

That’s what Brian Reid, Google’s vice-president of engineering, is claiming happened before he was fired at age 54 from the company. He worked at the tech giant from 2002 to 2004 and detailed a host of old-guy bashing comments on the part of Google employees in his suit against the company.

This former Stanford professor who said he got great reviews, believes Google, based in Mountain View, CA, gave him the axe because of his age.

His case was thrown out by a lower court because the direct manager who fired him never said a disparaging word about Reid’s age, at least not to his face. Even though other Google staffers made fun of his age, the court viewed those comments as “stray remarks,” and not relevant to Reid’s case.

Well, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday that those stray remarks may indeed matter and the case is now moving forward, much to the chagrin of employers across the country.

The “stray remarks doctrine” has been the established norm in this country when it came to employment law. Basically, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1980s, many courts ended up throwing out bias cases because such remarks were seen as having little or no bearing on claims of discriminatory firing, demotions, or any other employee dissing.

The ruling by California’s Supreme Court yesterday turns that on its ear. And now Reid, and potentially many other employees who feel they are being looked down upon at work because of their age, gender, race, etc., can support their claims of being unjustly fired or demoted even if a boss who hands them the pink slip never said a negative word to them.

“Federal employment law says you can’t consider those remarks,” said Eric Steinert, an employment partner at law firm Seyfarth Shaw in San Francisco, about the remarks made by Google employees. “In California, the court is saying, yes they can.”

That ruling, he continued, “is not good news for employers.”

Indeed, companies such as Google would rather such comments not be part of the cases against them, or have the cases thrown out altogether. The California court is saying, “sorry Google, workers who feel they’ve been undermined at work don’t have to prove that the boss man with the firing power is the only one who’s engaged in employee sabotage.”

I say sabotage because any individual who has to deal with what Reid claims he dealt with would have a hell of a time keeping a Googler smile on. That’s what Google calls it. This from the Google culture page: “We believe that each Googler is an equally important part of our success.”

It didn’t seem that way to Reid.

In the lawsuit he claims Google’s engineering operations Urs Hölzle, 38, one of the first ten Google employees, told him:

…that his opinions and ideas were “obsolete” and “too old to matter,” that
he was “slow,” “fuzzy,” “sluggish,” and “lethargic,” and that he did not “display a
sense of urgency” and “lack[ed] energy.” Hölzle allegedly made age-related
comments to Reid “every few weeks.” Other coworkers called Reid an “old man,”
an “old guy,” and an “old fuddy-duddy,” told him his knowledge was ancient, and
joked that Reid’s CD (compact disc) jewel case office placard should be an “LP”
instead of a “CD.”

In October 2003, according to the suit, Reid was removed from his director of operations position, and Hölzle assumed Reid’s position as director of operations, and Douglas Merrill, 20 years younger than Reid, took over his other duties.”

Reid was given a graduate degree program to take over, but he was later fired because, he was told, the program was being eliminated and because of his “poor performance.”

Here’s the statement Google has been sending to the press on the California court’s ruling yesterday:

“Brian Reid was not laid off based on his age. We look forward to demonstrating in court the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons why Mr. Reid was let go.”

It’s unclear whether Reid will win or not, but California’s highest court opened up the door for employees to fight what they feel is pervasive bias at work, even if it’s not coming right out of the mouths of the head honchos.

“As a practical result, employers will win fewer age cases on summary judgment,” Steinert said. “More cases will go to trial and presumably more evidence will come in at trial regarding general workplace comments not made by direct supervisors or decision makers.”

If nothing else, this may lead to managers being more on the look out for employee bad behavior.