Reports from earlier this week note that Hewlett-Packard will soon start laying off more than 500 workers from their Palm division as webOS will soon fade into the sunset.  The dust hasn’t even settled yet and their already causing more disturbance.  From the looks of things, the US webOS division isn’t the only one in trouble – their European webOS division could also be sacked.

According to a statement from HP, “We cannot comment on the impact in Europe until we have consulted with the appropriate employee representative bodies. We will work to redeploy employees from the webOS team in Europe into other roles within HP where possible.”  But they added that, “HP is exploring ways to leverage webOS software.”

HP is suffering from tons of negative publicity since they announced the PC business spinoff and the death of webOS.  According to AllThingsD, “several sources said that a series of recent discussions among its members have been intense ones, focused in part on how to spin the company out of its current cycle of bad news and what to do about the situation, which could mean even more dramatic change at the company in the months to come.”

And if the PC spinoff, death of webOS, and sacking of hundreds of employees aren’t enough to make the heads of HP directors and venture investors explode maybe the proposed class action lawsuit filed by HP shareholder Richard Gammel in U.S. District Court in Central California will.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “the lawsuit claims takes issue with Mr. Apotheker’s past comments regarding the company’s earnings expectations, the importance of its personal-computer business, and the envisioned role of the webOS mobile operating system it acquired along with Palm Inc. In August, H-P said it would likely spinoff the PC business, stop making devices that run webOS, and pay more than $10 billion for U.K software maker Autonomy Corp. It also revised downward its earnings forecast.”

According to several people with knowledge regarding the board meeting, HP directors are considering the possibility of replacing Apotheker as CEO.  The top candidate for the position is Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, because of her ability to run a large technology company.  Whitman left eBay when the company hit a wall.

It appears that the board disagrees with Apotheker’s announcement regarding HP’s PC business, plan for webOS and the TouchPad fire sale.  The weird thing about this is that, Apotheker cannot solely make decisions for HP, if the board did not agree with his plans for HP, they could have blocked them. Nevertheless, HP’s direction only gets more confusing with such an uprising a short year after Hurd was kicked out and software-centric Apotheker was brought in.