It is both “premature and improper” to grant employees fired from a Department of Energy contractor at the Oak Ridge Site a break from the normal statute of limitations before they even join a lawsuit, a federal judge ruled in Tennessee last week.
“Plaintiffs’ motion for joinder is improper because they have no authority to move on behalf of unidentified potential plaintiffs,” U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough ruled Feb. 5.
Also on Tuesday, Judge McDonough rejected another plaintiff motion that could have expanded the number of parties in the case.
The current case is too far along to allow the intervention of 23 people who filed a motion in November to join the litigation, McDonough held.
This suit “was filed over fourteen months ago, and discovery has been ongoing for eight months,” McDonough wrote in a four-page ruling. “The delay caused by intervention here would likely be measured in years rather than months,” McDonough said, adding that he has already rejected class action certification in the case.
Plaintiffs Carlton Speer, Malena Dennis, and Zachariah Duncan, were employed by United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) in August 2021, when the contractor announced all workers and subcontractor employees would have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Nov. 1, 2021 or be terminated. The contractor said it would consider requests for religious exemptions.
The plaintiffs, who identify themselves as Christians who believe the vaccines were derived from fetal cell lines, refused vaccination and were ultimately fired.
The plaintiffs, who unsuccessfully tried to pursue their litigation as a class-action suit, believe there are 98 potential plaintiffs who sought religious exemptions from UCOR. The current plaintiffs asked the federal district court to “equitably toll” the 90-day statute of limitations for future plaintiffs who refused to take the shot on religious grounds.
Equitable tolling is a common law principle giving plaintiffs leeway from a statute of limitations if they have done a reasonable amount of due diligence and still not discovered the facts they were looking for.
To get this relief, however, “the factors that the court must consider mainly concern an individual’s knowledge, which the court cannot determine without first understanding the circumstances of the individual seeking equitable tolling,” Judge McDonough said in the five-page ruling.
“The much more fundamental issue that both parties fail to acknowledge is that plaintiffs do not have the authority to seek equitable tolling or permissive joinder on the behalf of unidentified potential plaintiffs, as numerous courts have held,” McDonough wrote.
