Walt Tamosaitis, a former senior contractor official on the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant who has alleged he was removed from the project for raising safety concerns, is taking his legal fight over his removal to federal court in a lawsuit set to be filed today. The suit will be filed against the Department of Energy and URS, the WTP subcontractor for which Tamosaitis works, according to a press released issued yesterday by the law firm representing Tamosaitis. “The Department of Energy has been named as a defendant because Dr. Tamosaitis alleges that the DOE acted as though they were his employer in participating in the decision to remove him from the WTP for whistleblowing,” the release says.
In his suit, Tamosaitis will not be asking for monetary damages from DOE, but instead will seek to have “federal court supervision over the DOE to ensure that DOE managers conduct proper oversight of Hanford contractors and that they not conspire with contractors to retaliate against whistleblowers,” according to the release. Tamosaitis will also seek to be reinstated to the WTP “in a position of responsibility,” attorney Jack Sheridan said in the release, adding, “That is a remedy we could not get in state court.”
Tamosaitis alleged last summer that he was removed from the WTP project, where he had served as the manager of research and technology, after raising safety concerns. Both WTP project contractor Bechtel National and URS have strongly denied his allegations, though, claiming instead that Tamosaitis’ departure from the Hanford vit plant had been planned for months before it occurred. Last fall, Tamosaitis filed a lawsuit in a court in Washington state against Bechtel National and URS over his removal. Tamosaitis also filed a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Labor, but because that complaint has not been resolved within a year, he can now pursue his whistleblower complaint in federal court, according to his attorney. As part of preparations for his new suit, Tamosaitis this fall amended his initial lawsuit to drop URS and effectively focus it on Bechtel National and several named contractor officials on a single claim of intentional interference with a business expectancy. That suit against Bechtel is scheduled to go to trial in Benton County Superior Court in Washington state next year.
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