Two employees, one chat thread - and a call to the FDA hours later
Ryan Lisowski worked at Abbott Laboratories' baby formula plant in Sturgis, Michigan, for more than eight years. A lawsuit filed May 18, 2026, in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, says HR ended his career over a Teams chat his coworker started - and just before he reported a product safety concern to the FDA.
Lisowski, an assistant chemist hired in December 2017, says he exchanged personal messages on Teams in February 2025 with a coworker, Abeygail Steele. The complaint quotes Steele making several odd remarks in the same thread, including one that "dead people…don't try and blow up a 6 story bomb every 5 minutes" and another about wanting to "WWE" her child "on the daily." When the tone turned uncomfortable, Steele asked to keep things work-related. Lisowski apologized and the chat ended, the filing states.
Steele then reported him. On February 17, 2025, HR called Lisowski in. Lab Department Manager Kaitlyn Cain and HR Department Manager Kelsey Sobeski questioned him at length about his messages, the complaint says. Steele, according to the filing, was not similarly questioned about hers. He was suspended later that day. Cain told him the suspension would last two weeks, the filing says. It lasted just over a year.
The timing of what happened next sits at the center of the case. After the morning meeting, Lisowski says he told Sobeski he was worried metal might be leaching into the baby formula and planned to raise it with the plant manager the next morning. Hours later, he was locked out of the building. At about 5 a.m. on February 18, he reported the contamination concern to the FDA's MedWatch program, the complaint says.
He filed an EEOC charge on April 6, 2025. Abbott filed a position statement in September 2025, the filing states. The suspension dragged on. On February 23, 2026, Employee Relations Manager Deborah Boskovic emailed Lisowski "to communicate the decision to end [his] employment with Abbott," citing Abbott's anti-harassment policy. He had received no prior verbal or written warning across more than eight years at the company, the complaint says.
For HR professionals, the filing reads as a study in how an investigation can become a lawsuit. Lisowski alleges Abbott applied unequal scrutiny to two employees in the same chat - one male, one female - and that managers leaned on what his complaint describes as an unfair gender stereotype that men tend to sexually harass women. He alleges his earlier complaints about an ex-partner being promoted into his reporting line went nowhere with Cain and with Sobeski. And he alleges the suspension landed hours after he flag
