The prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has made its “last, best and final’ offer to settle with a handful of employees who sued over COVID-19 vaccination policy, according to recently-filed federal court papers.
UT-Battelle, the University of Tennessee-Battelle venture that runs the Oak Ridge lab for DOE, made the offer to the half-dozen employees on May 10, according to a staff report filed with U.S. District Court Judge Charles Atchley in the Eastern District of Tennessee.
Plaintiffs are considering this offer and intend to respond by May 31, according to the status report. If Plaintiffs take the offer, the parties plan to notify the court and file proposed settlement papers for review by June 14, 2023.
If they do not take the offer, the plaintiffs and the DOE contractor are back on the road to trial and a proposed pre-hearing schedule would be filed next month, according to the status report.
Judge Atchley has in recent filings prodded the parties to reach some resolution given that in mid-2022 the court was told settlement was close to finished. Last month, Atchley said in an order that “the court strongly encourages the parties to resolve this matter soon.”
The case of one of the original six plaintiffs, Mark Cofer, is “dismissed without prejudice,” according to a May 12 court order. It was unclear from the document if Cofer had accepted the contractor’s settlement offer.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory staffers filed suit in October 2021 saying management’s vaccination policy resulted in them being placed on unpaid leave, despite claiming allowed-for exemptions.
The employees would subsequently return to work after a restraining order in another court was issued. The administration of President Joe Biden last week ended the remaining COVID-19 vaccination rules for federal workers and contractors that were instituted during the pandemic.
