Words have very specific meanings. Most employee equity contracts require 1 year of service before vesting. If the company played dirty and terminated him at 51 weeks to avoid granting the options, that's not cool but it's within the scope of the agreement.

Clawback in this context has a specific meaning - http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/clawback.asp.

See also http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/business/dealbook/wells-fa...

Clawback is taking back something given. Since quite likely the options were never vested or transferred, they weren't clawed back.