A lawsuit filed by the disgruntled ex-chief financial officer of the Nevada National Security Site’s prime contractor remained in mediation this week, with both the company and its chief executive again denying that the former finance chief was fired for protected whistleblowing.
In the latest filings in the case, Mark Martinez, chief executive officer of the Honeywell-led Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS), denied that he had always had it out for former CFO Stephen Musin and wanted to fire Musin at the earliest opportunity, but did admit that he would have preferred to have had some say over whether Musin was hired in the first place.
Musin alleges financial misconduct by Martinez and the company, from which the ex-CFO was fired in 2019. That same year, Musin sued for alleged whistleblower retaliation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX. Musin is trying to prove that MSTS, a private company, is an affiliate of a publicly traded company and therefore subject to the landmark 2001 corporate accountability law passed in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal.
In their answers to Musin’s second amended complaint, the plaintiff’s latest, both Martinez and MSTS again denied that the contractor is subject to SOX and pointed out that Musin was an at-will employee, subject to termination at any time, “so long as said discharge was not for an unlawful reason.”
In early March, all parties in the case told Judge Jennifer Dorsey that they would give mediation a try. At deadline Thursday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, neither the parties nor the court had filed any update about those talks. If the talks fail, the parties would be free to ask Dorsey to decide the case via summary judgement — a decision based solely on the arguments made in court so far. If there is no summary judgement, the case could go to trial.
MSTS has managed the former Nevada Test Site under contract to the National Nuclear Security Administration since 2017, and the agency holds options that would extend the pact into 2027. MSTS is in the fourth year of the contract’s five-year base period. Honewell owns 40% of MSTS, while Jacobs Engineering Group and HII Nuclear respectively own 37% and 23% of the company.
