Warner Bros. Discovery has sued Amazon in Los Angeles, accusing the company of knowingly recruiting a senior marketing executive who remained under contract through October 2027 and seeking a court order to stop Amazon from interfering with similar employment agreements involving other WBD executives.
The lawsuit, filed July 21 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, centers on Pia Barlow, who served as executive vice president of Originals & Multi-Cultural Marketing for WarnerMedia Services. WBD claims Barlow left the company about 16 months before her three-year employment agreement was scheduled to expire after Amazon offered her greater compensation and agreed to protect her from legal costs tied to the early departure.
Barlow entered the agreement in October 2024 with Turner Services, another WBD subsidiary, for a term running from November 1, 2024, through October 31, 2027. Her employment was transferred to WarnerMedia Services at the beginning of 2026 without changing the expiration date, according to the complaint.
WBD alleges Amazon knew about the agreement while recruiting Barlow and was aware that she had agreed to remain with the company through 2027. The complaint claims Amazon offered to provide or pay for legal representation if her departure led to litigation and continued pursuing her after WBD sent written notice of her contractual obligations.
Barlow informed WBD in May that she intended to leave, formally resigned June 5 and ended her employment June 26, court filings state. She is not named as a party to the lawsuit. WBD instead is seeking damages from Amazon for allegedly causing the contract to be broken.
The company claims Barlow was part of a broader recruiting effort. According to the complaint, Amazon had recently tried to hire another WBD executive whose employment agreement runs through December 2027 but did not secure that employee. WBD also alleges Amazon was pursuing at least one other executive under a fixed-term agreement when the lawsuit was filed.
WBD relies primarily on claims that Amazon intentionally interfered with its contractual relationship with Barlow and induced her to breach the agreement. Under California law, intentional interference with a contract generally requires proof that a valid agreement existed, an outside party knew about it and deliberately acted to cause a breach or disruption that resulted in harm.
California's broad protection for employee mobility does not necessarily make a fixed-term employment agreement the same as an unlawful noncompete. State law generally allows employees to work for competitors after leaving a company and sharply restricts agreements that interfere with that right. At the same time, California law recognizes employment contracts covering a specified period rather than the more common at-will arrangement.
The distinction is central to WBD's allegations. The company is not claiming Barlow should be permanently barred from joining Amazon because it is a competitor. WBD argues Amazon knowingly persuaded her to leave before the date through which she had agreed to provide her services.
Courts also generally cannot force an employee to continue providing personal services to a company. WBD therefore is not asking the judge to order Barlow back to work. Its requested injunction targets Amazon and would prohibit the company from interfering with fixed-term employment agreements involving WBD and its subsidiaries.
Hollywood has confronted a similar dispute before. Twentieth Century Fox sued Netflix in 2016 after accusing the streaming company of recruiting executives who remained under fixed-term contracts. Fox alleged that Netflix knew about the agreements but offered the executives higher compensation and agreed to cover legal expenses associated with leaving early.
A Los Angeles judge later found that Netflix had engaged in unfair competition and entered an injunction restricting it from soliciting certain Fox employees who remained subject to valid fixed-term agreements. A California appeals court upheld the ruling in 2021. The appellate decision was unpublished, which means it generally cannot be cited as binding precedent in other California cases, but the litigation addressed many of the same questions now raised by WBD.
WBD also brings a claim under California's Unfair Competition Law, which allows courts to stop business conduct found to be unlawful or unfair. The company argues Amazon's alleged recruiting practices threaten more than its relationship with Barlow by undermining its ability to rely on fixed-term agreements when planning and maintaining its executive workforce.
A separate claim for interference with prospective economic advantage focuses on the economic value WBD expected to continue receiving from Barlow's work. The company says her experience and role overseeing major marketing campaigns provided an ongoing business benefit that Amazon intentionally disrupted by recruiting her before the contract expired.
WBD is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages along with preliminary and permanent injunctive relief preventing Amazon from interfering with fixed-term employment agreements involving WBD and its subsidiaries.
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