Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Resigning was probably not your best move. You should have brought this to the attention of other officers of the company, or members of the board of directors. The company you worked for is the one with the real claims against their ex-CEO, not you. You MIGHT have some kind of claim personally for interference with prospective economic advantage if he successfully sold accounts on his new company instead of the one you were working for and he was supposed to be. That would be good for your lost commissions, at most, assuming you worked on commission. Unfortunately, other than that, you have no more rights against a fellow employee for screwing the company than all the Saturn employees have for that company going out of business - none. You don't have a right to work for a good company or even an honest CEO. If the CEO screws the company, that claim belongs to the owners of the company, not the employees, no matter how closely they worked with the CEO. The exception being, as I said, if the CEO directly interferes with the business relationship that a particular employee has, AND there are direct losses to the employee (basically commissions).