A federal judge yesterday granted URS Energy & Construction’s request to throw out a lawsuit filed by Walter Tamosaitis, a former contractor executive at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant who has alleged he was removed from the WTP for raising safety concerns. In his ruling, Judge Lonny Suko found that Tamosaitis had failed to abide by a requirement to wait for one year after filing a complaint with the Department of Labor over his removal before filing his lawsuit against URS E&C. As a result of Tamosaitis failing to fully exhaust his administrative remedies, the court did not have “subject matter jurisdiction” to consider Tamosaitis’ suit, according to the ruling.
Suko also found that URS E&C was not responsible for Tamosaitis’ removal from the Hanford vit plant project, instead holding WTP contractor Bechtel National responsible for the decision. Under URS E&C’s subcontract to Bechtel National, BNI Project Manager Frank Russo “was authorized to require the removal of Dr. Tamosaitis from the WTP project and he did so,” Suko wrote. He also found that Tamosaitis failed to show that URS E&C conspired with Bechtel National to have removed from the WTP. “URS E&C simply carried out a directive from BNI which it was contractually obligated to carry out, whatever reservations it may have had about its propriety,” Suko wrote.
Tamosaitis’ suit against URS EC, for which he still works, was the last of his initial set of lawsuits filed over his removal from the Hanford vit plant project. Tamosaitis, who previously served as the manager of research and technology at the WTP, has alleged he was removed from working on the project in the summer of 2010 for submitting a list of 50 open technical issues at the WTP shortly before his departure occurred and for sending an e-mail to consultants in an attempt to get them to question whether the issue of waste mixing at the plant had been sufficiently resolved before it was deemed closed. Both Bechtel National and URS strongly denied his allegations. A suit Tamosaitis filed against Bechtel National in Washington state was dismissed, but is under appeal. Tamosaitis filed lawsuits against URS Corp. and the Department of Energy in federal court, but those have also been dismissed. In a written response yesterday, Tamosaitis’ attorney, Jack Sheridan, said, “we disagree with the ruling and we are confident that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will overturn Judge Suko’s rulings in this case. This ruling will strengthen our case against BNI, which is currently filed at the Washington State Supreme Court.” URS did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.
