Judge rules on if manager at DOE’s lab in Richland gets a new whistleblower trial

A federal judge has denied Aleta Busselman’s request for a new trial in her whistleblower complaint against Battelle at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

In December, a federal court jury in Richland unanimously sided with Battelle Memorial Institute, the contractor operating the Department of Energy’s local national lab, in a case accusing the contractor of retaliating against Busselman.

It found after an eight-day trial that Busselman did not make a complaint against Battelle protected by federal whistleblower laws.

Busselman does not plan to appeal the case to a higher court, said her attorney, Jack Sheridan of Seattle.

The case stemmed from Busselman’s responsibility for investigating why PNNL was vulnerable to being defrauded of $530,000.

In December of 2016 the national laboratory was tricked into sending a $530,000 payment owed to a Tri-Cities construction company to a fraudulent bank account.

Employees had received an email saying the construction company had a new bank account, which was not true.

Busselman said PNNL officials interfered with the report, called a root cause analysis, that her team prepared to determine why PNNL was vulnerable to the fraud.

They thought it made management look bad, and could influence whether Battelle was held responsible for the fraudulent payment, she said.

When she complained, she was moved from her position, she said, but she was not fired.

Battelle: Accuracy was goal

Attorneys for Battelle said that the investigation into the theft of the money was handled no differently than other investigations.

Changes made to the report were part of routine “give and take,” they said.

Busselman would have been moved from her position, despite any disagreement, because she had told a supervisor she was unhappy with it, Battelle attorneys said.

U.S. Judge Sal Mendoza Jr. ruled that there was sufficient evidence to justify the jury’s conclusion in favor of Battelle.

“In deference to the jury’s fact-finding role, the court denies plaintiff’s motion for a new trial,” he said in a court document.

Busselman’s attorney had argued that she was due a new trial because the evidence permitted only one reasonable conclusion, which was contrary to the jury’s verdict.

But the judge said there was ample evidence supporting Battelle’s argument that a key email sent by Busselman “was an overreaction to benign, professionally customary input.”

The email said that letting concerned parties manipulate investigative reports “at the end of the process to make us sound better” is not how the national laboratory conducts itself.

Mendoza said that the upper manager whom Bussleman claimed was the source of impermissible meddling had testified that “his principal aim was to ensure factual accuracy.”

An expert witness for Battelle testified that “give and take” and the resultant tension over the investigative report’s conclusion,was professionally reasonable, the judge pointed out.

Busselman’s testimony provided evidence from which the jury could have found that her complaint was covered by federal whistleblower law, he said.

“The jury evidently assigned little or no weight to that testimony,” Mendoza said in his ruling. “Given defendant’s vigorous cross-examination of (Bussleman), the court cannot find that the jury’s decision in this regard was irrational.”

Battelle ended up covering $430,000 of the fraudulent payment, with $100,000 recovered by the bank and federal investigators.

This story was originally published March 30, 2020 at 12:03 PM.