Was Mary Curlee a hero or a backstabbing co-worker?

Curlee was an administrative worker at Kootenai County Fire and Rescue (KCFR) in Idaho. She thought two of her co-workers wasted too much time on personal conversations and brought the matter to various supervisors.

Curlee claims two supervisors told her to document her co-workers’ behavior that she believed to be wasteful.

For several months, Curlee hand wrote a detailed, minute-by-minute log of what the two co-workers did.

One day, while filling in for Curlee, one of the co-workers found her log and also showed it to the third co-worker.

Curlee often referred to her two co-workers as “Buffy” and “Muffy” in the log. Both women thought the nicknames were derogatory and insulting, and spoke to the Fire Chief about the log.

When the chief discussed the situation with Curlee, she said she would never be able to have a good working relationship with the other two women and that she wouldn’t apologize to them. Curlee was fired.

Is she a protected whistleblower?

Curlee sued KCFR, alleging she was wrongfully terminated in violation of the Idaho Protection of Public Employees Act, commonly referred to as the whistleblower act, for documenting a waste of public funds.

KCFR denied the allegations and moved to have the case thrown out.

The stated purpose of the whistleblower act is to “protect the integrity of government by providing a legal cause of action for public employees who experience adverse action from their employer as a result of reporting waste and violations of a law, rule or regulation.”

Given that, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that there are genuine questions of whether Curlee was fired for conduct protected under the whistleblower law. It refused to throw out the case. The high court said a jury should now determine whether her employer discharged her in retaliation for her documentation of waste.

Should someone who kept minute-by-minute logs of her co-workers’ actions be protected by a whistleblower statute? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

Why? Because some employees will take the problem to a regulatory agency.

That’s exactly what happened to Encore Management, Inc., in Arlington, TX, an apartment complex management company.

A community director at one of Encore’s complexes expressed concerns to her supervisor that a renovation project was exposing workers to asbestos.

Encore didn’t respond to her concerns, and she contacted the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). That agency found the apartment complex hadn’t performed sufficient asbestos testing before beginning renovations and had hired an unlicensed contractor to remove known asbestos material.

Then, the community director was fired.

She filed a complaint with federal OSHA, alleging she’d been fired by Encore in retaliation for filing the complaint with DSHS.

OSHA found the employee was terminated in violation of the whistleblower provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Now Encore has to pay its former employee $25,000 for lost wages, job-seeking expenses and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Amanda Thaxton raised concerns about possible preferential treatment to North Carolina Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and about a hostile work environment at the State Ethics Commission.

Thaxton was dismissed from her $30,400 per year job as an office assistant with the commission. She says the firing came without an explanation and that she hadn’t been disciplined or questioned about her work performance in her 15 months on the job, according to The News & Observer.

The State Personnel Commission reviewed her hostile work environment claim and found the Ethics Commission was a dysfunctional and distrustful workplace.

Now Thaxton has filed a lawsuit claiming her dismissal was in retaliation for reporting her concerns.

In the wake of all this, the state auditor is investigating the claims that a Perdue aide received special treatment when he was allowed to review the Lt. Governor’s disclosure statements alone in a closed office.

In contrast, the story we ran last week ended (so far) much differently. The attorney chose not to follow established whistleblower procedures, forged a letter, admitted it and still wasn’t dismissed from her job.

In comments we received about that story, some said the attorney should have known better than to try to launch an investigation by filing a forged letter. Others said the lawyer’s fear of losing her job was a valid reason to go about reporting her allegations through the forged letter.

And that’s just what happened to Thaxton in the North Carolina case. At 24-years-old, her position with the State Ethics Commission had been her first job out of college. Thaxton said the firing has hit her hard financially. She’s asking the court to reinstate her and award her triple damages that the state’s whistleblower law allows, plus legal fees. Most likely, she has a long fight ahead of her. 

Imagine this: An employee admits she forged a document. But after an investigation by HR, the final decision is to not fire her. Reason: There were no specific rules prohibiting forgery, and the employee was afraid of retaliation by a co-worker.

If you’re outraged already, hold on, because it just gets better: The employee in question worked for the Connecticut State Ethics Commission. And her forgery caused another state employee to be fired.

Maureen Duggan was a staff attorney for the Commission. She wrote a phony letter that appeared to be written by an anonymous parking lot attendant about problems within the Ethics Commission’s executive director, Alan Plofsky.

To make the letter appear authentic, Duggan went to the trouble to misspell words, such as “anonimus,” according to the Hartford Advocate.

Duggan received her own letter as an attorney for the ethics commission. She and two other attorneys declared the document authentic. Investigations followed which resulted in Plofsky being fired.

Plofsky sued, and during a deposition, Duggan admitted she’d forged the letter.

‘Forgery is a crime’

“She forged a letter. Forgery is a crime. How much more just cause do you need?” asked Andy Sauer, head of Connecticut Common Cause, referring to the state’s decision not to fire Duggan.

Duggan told investigators she wrote the letter because she feared retaliation if her complaints became public.

But as a lawyer for the Ethics Commission, Duggan should have known better than anyone else that if she wanted to raise questions about something within the government, she’d get whistleblower protection.

A state panel eventually reinstated Plofsky in a different state agency.

This case raises some interesting questions for HR professionals:

• Forgery is a form of lying. How big would an employee’s lie — or its effect — have to be for that person to be fired?
• Does your company have a policy in place for when an employee acts as a whistleblower — coming forward with concerns about other employees’ conduct?

We’d like to hear from you. You can enter your comments in the box below. 

Worker: I found toxic hazards here at work. Company: You must be crazy.

And the company meant it, literally.

Jack Seddon was a worker at a DuPont Company plant in New Jersey for 30 years.

In 2003, he turned DuPont in to OSHA, saying a reactor he operated was corroded and in danger of leaking a substance that would burn the eyes and respiratory system.

After Seddon filed the complaint, DuPont referred him to a company therapist, who recommended suspending Seddon for two months with pay.

Several independent psychologists found Seddon to be mentally sound.

He retired from his job the next year, and the company replaced the reactor in question.

Seddon also sued the company. At trial, an expert said if the reactor had leaked even just 10% of its contents, it would have caused a lethal plume measuring 1,000 feet by 1,000 feet.

Recently, a jury awarded him $1.2 million, according to local media reports. The suit claimed DuPont violated New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act, which forbids employers from taking retaliatory action against workers who report they believe is illegal to managers or authorities.