Federal whistleblowers are entitled to damages of missed future pay, court rules
govexec.com
govexec.com
On the one hand it says
"The latter category has long been interpreted to include future lost earnings, the court said, including when reputational harm can hurt employees’ earning potential."
Which makes it sound like the decision is no big deal and in standing with long set precedent.
But then it also says, "Patrick Walsh, one of Perlick's attorneys, said the case could have far reaching impact."
But it isn't clear what the far reaching impact is, since future earnings have always been a factor?
It sounds like the actual far reaching impact is this?
"The court also said MSPB erred when it ruled Perlick was not entitled to compensatory damages because she was not guaranteed a job after her research concluded. Instead, the judges ruled, Perlick needed only to show that a preponderance of the evidence that she was likely to have future employment. That standard does not require certainty, the court ruled"
So they just clarified you don't need a guarantee of a future job to seek lost future wages, just a preponderance of evidence?
I'm just trying to parse what is actually novel & news here and the article isn't helping.
In this particular case, the issue was what counted as consequential damage from the illegal actions. The VA argued that as the whistle-blower was working on renewable one-year contracts, the lost earnings were fully compensated for by back-pay up to the end of the contract in effect at the time. Her lawyers argued her firing interrupted her research, prevented her from publishing on it and damaged her reputation in a way that could have impacted her future employment.
While this issue could be framed as being one about how much evidence is required here, I feel that, more importantly, it is a rejection of the VA's premise, which amounted to the claim that the end-date of the plaintiff's contract set a horizon beyond which no harm could be attributed to the VA's illegal actions. While this ostensibly only applies to workers on fixed contracts, I imagine the same principle could be applied in other cases where the employer attempts to limit the scope of damages to the specific position held by the employee at the time of the infringement.
It’s still no walk in the park: you have to prove liability first, meaning you have to prove your whistleblower activity was the motive for your firing. (The government will cook up an alternate explanation, of course.) You have to prove your damages to a reasonable certainty. But if you do jump through those hoops, then you won’t hit a special wall previously erected to block an aspect of federal employees’ claims.
I have seen this at multiple employers.
The whistleblower system is hopelessly broken.
I guess they forgot the "if they manage to stay alive" part. /s