Laboratory, Laid Off Employees to Appeal Age Discrimination Trial Verdicts
NS&D Monitor
7/3/2014
The ongoing battle over a 2008 layoff of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees isn’t likely to be over any time soon. A group of workers split a pair of legal decisions with the lab over the last two years centering on breach of contract and age discrimination claims, with five laid off workers—a small fraction of the 130 workers involved in the lawsuit—winning a $2.7 million breach of contract decision in early 2013 but losing a potentially more lucrative age discrimination case in December. But as a case involving the remainder of the laid off employees moves to trial (currently scheduled to begin Jan. 26, 2015), both parties have decided to appeal the original verdicts in the cases. That means that three separate cases tied to the 2008 layoffs could be proceeding to trial at the same time
The employees are part of a group of 130 laid off employees suing the lab over the 2008 layoff of 440 lab workers, but instead of trying the cases as a group, lawyers have broken the employees up into groups. Lawyers for the employees had planned to proceed toward a trial involving 10 former scientists that claim they were the victims of age discrimination, but the judge in the case has ordered both sides to come up with suggestions about how the remaining cases can be broken up and tried. Gary Gwilliam, a lawyer for the employees, said he has suggested nine groups, while lawyers for the lab have suggested 17 groups. The scientists were an average of 55 years old when laid off, and Gwilliam said a statistical breakdown reveals that there is about a 1 in a million chance the employees would have been selected for the layoff without age discrimination.
Lawyer for Employees Pushing for Settlement
Gwilliam said the employees’ appeal in the age discrimination case will involve some court rulings and statistical issues as well, while lab spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said the lab’s appeal of the breach of contract case hinges on “legal errors in the way the plaintiffs’ contract claims were framed for consideration by the jury.”
Gwilliam, who has voiced frustration about being stymied in an attempt to seek a settlement with the lab and DOE, said he expects the appeal will take a minimum of five years. If the remaining trial was broken into 17 groups, trials would also add significant time to the case. “In my opinion there is a continued effort on the part of the lab and on DOE’s part to delay the case, make it longer and make it more expensive,” he said. “The question is when the hell do we quit spending money? We won part of it. We lost part of it. We have innocent people here.”
