A federal judge will rule on a request from Consolidated Nuclear Security to throw out a suit brought by employees who allege, in a suit that has ground on for three years amid the plaintiffs’ failure to retain a lawyer, that the contractor improperly withheld wages from workers in Tennessee.
Judge Katherine Crytzer did not say when she might rule on the motion by Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) to toss the case, but by deciding to rule on the contractor’s motion to dismiss, she set the stage for the lawsuit to conclude before the plaintiffs get a hearing.
That the named plaintiffs may never have their day in the courtroom is largely their own fault, Crytzer wrote Friday in an Aug. 4 filing.
“This case has had a winding procedural history,” Judge Katherine Crytzer said in an Aug. 4 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Knoxville. “This action remains without an operative scheduling order. But Defendant’s ‘Motion for Summary Judgment’ is ripe for review.”
Plaintiffs James Myers, James Young and Douglas Messerli allege that in 2017 CNS paid its salaried employees for only 25 of 26 biweekly periods. The two have failed since 2020 to certify the lawsuit as a class action on behalf of fellow employees at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee.
They have also struggled to maintain counsel and have requested multiple deadline extensions to hire new lawyers and to meet other court-ordered deadlines. Without outside counsel, Meyers and Young cannot turn their case into a class action suit because they themselves would be part of the class. That would create a conflict of interest, the court has said.
CNS filed a motion for summary judgment on May 9, writing that the “plaintiffs admit CNS paid them for every pay period they worked” and that they were ’at will’ employees and, under Tennessee law, CNS had the right to make prospective changes to their compensation.”
Crytzer’s Aug. 4 order says that “proceeding toward trial at this time would be inefficient for all parties and the court.” She halted all action in the case until she rules on the CNS motion for summary judgment.
CNS, with lead partner Bechtel National, manages both Y-12 and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, on behalf of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The contract runs through fiscal 2024, but the government holds options to keep CNS at Pantex through fiscal year 2025 and at Y-12 through fiscal year 2027.
