The management teams of large companies like Columbia Gas of Massachusetts do not see every detail of the day to day operations of their companies. Fortunately, those companies have thousands of employees who are working for them every day who see every detail of their work. Those employees are a valuable source of information that managers can access to assess the performance of their company in many areas, including safety. Unfortunately, many safety complaints are not addressed by the management teams that receive them. Sometimes, the consequences remain within the company, with workers getting hurt or killed on the job. At other times, the unsafe conditions that come to the attention of workers that report them to management go on to cause disasters that hurt and kill many people and destroy large amounts of property.

In September 2018, a series of explosions and fires occurred in the Merrimack Valley as the result of excess pressure within Columbia Gas’s natural gas lines. One person died, twenty-five people were injured, and thousands of residents had to evacuate their homes. Officials entered each home and business to ensure that the gas supply was shut off and that there was no gas trapped inside the building. Gas and electric service remained shut off as the displaced residents waited to be allowed back into their homes. After several days, all area residents were back in their homes, and electric service had been restored. The restoration of gas service to the area required extensive work on the pipeline, which was completed several months after the disaster. During the time that gas service was unavailable, residents had to employ temporary solutions like cooking on hot plates, heating with electric space heaters, and going without hot water.

A few months before the explosion, an employee of Columbia Gas repeatedly warned the managers of the company that the company did not have enough employees to provide safe, reliable natural gas service within the company’s service area. The employee worked in the metering and monitoring department. As staff numbers in his department were cut, he realized that the company did not have enough human resources to adequately monitor the gas pressure in the pipelines throughout its service area. Bart Madeiros retired after his repeated attempts to have his safety concerns addressed went ignored. His testimony was critical in the recent federal case against his former employer.

Columbia Gas Company recently pled guilty to federal charges alleging that the company violated federal pipeline safety laws. Investigators report that the company not only failed to protect the safety of the public, but it also acted with disregard for public safety. Columbia’s company will sell its business in Massachusetts and pay fines of over fifty million dollars. Columbia is also subject to a separate settlement under which it must pay eighty million dollars to individuals who experienced loss and damage because of the explosion and the municipalities whose infrastructure was damaged by the explosion.

Conscientious employees like Bart Madeiros are powerful allies to companies who want to prevent accidents and catastrophes. The Mississippi Whistleblower Protection Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC support whistleblowers in their efforts to expose safety concerns, fraud, waste, and corruption. Call us today, at 1 (601) 790-1505 to arrange an initial consultation with the Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC.

President Trump’s barrage of attacks on the whistleblower who expressed concern over Trump’s telephone conversation with the president of the Ukraine has already had severe consequences for other whistleblowers and would-be whistleblowers. Not only do potential whistleblowers see the president treating a whistleblower with disrespect and disregard, but there is also evidence that other government officials are following suit. Reports from the Pentagon’s office of the Inspector General indicate that managers in government agencies are retaliating against whistleblowers without concern that they will be disciplined for doing so. Would-be whistleblowers report feeling more afraid than ever to speak up. People who work for government agencies also report feeling little confidence that they would be protected if they did speak up.

For example, within the defense department, there has been a trend of the department either disagreeing with the results of investigations conducted by the Inspector General or failing to take action in whistleblower retaliation cases. This trend both suppresses would-be whistleblowers and gives management the notion that retaliation against whistleblowers might be overlooked if it were to happen. This problem is especially frustrating for whistleblower protection advocates because the Pentagon’s office of the inspector general can do little about cases where the department disagrees with the results of their investigation or fails to act on their recommendations.

The severity of the retaliation that has occurred in the Trump whistleblower situation has caused whistleblower protection advocates to urge Congress to enforce and strengthen the laws that are intended to protect whistleblowers. Among the suggestions that have been offered for improvement of whistleblower protection laws are a statutorily enforceable right to anonymity and provisions for filing a lawsuit in court (instead of a board or agency) if privacy is violated.

The high profile nature of the Trump whistleblower situation is affecting all kinds of whistleblowers, and it’s not a good one. Where some whistleblower cases, even high profile ones, have illustrated the value of coming forward to expose corruption, fraud, or waste and the protections offered to the people who do so, that is not what Americans are seeing in the Trump whistleblower situation. They are seeing a whistleblower who exposed a serious issue being poorly treated by a powerful public official who has not yet been held accountable for their words and actions toward the whistleblower.

  Presently, American confidence in federal whistleblower protection laws is declining thanks to the Trump whistleblower situation and a troubling trend within government agencies of letting retaliation against whistleblowers slide by unpunished. Would-be whistleblowers mustn’t cower in the face of the current events in Washington. As long as there are waste, corruption, and fraud, your voice is needed to expose it. The Mississippi Whistleblower Protection Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC affirm whistleblowers in their efforts to expose fraud,  waste, and corruption. To learn more about whistleblower protection, call us at 1 (601) 790-1505 to arrange an initial consultation with the Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC.

Whistleblowers are to be commended for their courage and willingness to come forward with information that can help others and protect them from harm. Unfortunately, between the time a whistleblower first reports a concern and the time the concern becomes publicly evident, tragedies can occur. A construction worker who had reported construction safety violations to his supervisor was seriously injured when the building he was working on collapsed. Many others were wounded in the Hard Rock hotel collapse in New Orleans, and three people perished.

Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma is a citizen of Honduras. He and his family have lived in New Orleans for eighteen years. When the Hard Rock hotel collapsed, Ramirez suffered trauma to his head and an eye injury that will require surgery, in addition to internal inflammation and injury. Several days after the hotel collapse, after Ramirez had been released from the hospital, he was fishing with his family when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials arrested him because he did not have identification documents. He was recently deported, and the timing of his arrest raises concerns that his deportation is retaliation against Ramirez Palma for reporting safety violations before the hotel collapse and for speaking with the media after the collapse occurred. He and his family had been fishing several times before, always with a valid fishing license, and they report that the October encounter with ICE officials is the first time they were asked for personal identification.

The hotel collapse is under investigation by the New Orleans Police Department and the United States Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). The investigating agencies need information from Ramirez Palma and other workers about what they saw and experienced at the hotel site before the collapse, especially safety violations they may have witnessed. Some of the safety concerns that Ramirez Palma reported to his supervisors include uncured concrete that was too weak to support weight and asymmetry within the structure that could impact its stability. He states that upon voicing his concerns to his supervisors, he was told to continue working. He also says that he was threatened with replacement on the job site.

Workplace safety advocates, immigration advocates, and others urged ICE to delay or stop Ramirez Palma’s deportation, to no avail. Deportation could make Ramirez Palma unavailable to the investigating agencies, possibly depriving them of critical information that could assist them in determining the cause of the deadly collapse. It is also reported that other undocumented workers may have information that could help investigators. They are reluctant to speak about the accident because they fear that they, too, could be deported. Multiple undocumented workers had reported safety concerns while working at the Hard Rock hotel site, and it is crucial that the investigating agencies not lose access to them.

A whistleblower protection attorney is a powerful ally in the face of painful retaliation. If you have experienced retaliation as the result of reporting safety, health, financial, or other concerns, call the Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC today at 1 (601) 790-1505 for an initial consultation.

Whistleblowers bring matters out into the open that would otherwise remain hidden. Sometimes, the things that are exposed by whistleblowers have consequences that are literally a matter of life or death. A recent disclosure by a whistleblower who filed a suit in federal court claims that the largest military shipbuilder in America put American lives at risk when it falsified certifications and test results pertaining to the stealth coatings that it puts on its submarines. The stealth coating is a material that resembles foam rubber, and it is designed to applied to submarine hulls with a two-part adhesive that requires special certification for its use. The reason that certification must be obtained by the companies and workers who apply the adhesive is that the adhesive doesn’t work correctly if it is not mixed properly. When the adhesive is not prepared properly prior to application, the coating can peel off of the hull. It was reported by personnel who operated the affected submarines that large sections of coating had torn off of their vessels while the vessels were on the move.

The complaint accuses Hunter Ingalls Industries of claiming that it had coated the hulls of certain submarines properly when the reality is that the company took shortcuts during the coating application process that compromised the coating’s performance. The coating is designed to enable submarines to elude detection by enemy sonar. When the coating was not applied properly, it created a danger to all of the people on board each of the affected submarines, who were operating as if they could not be detected when in fact their submarines were detectable.

Applying the stealth coating incorrectly was dangerous enough, but the company is alleged to have gone even further in their wrongdoing by certifying to the government that they had applied the coating correctly. That certification was made under a contract  that the company had with the government to manufacture the submarines to meet specific criteria in exchange for payment for the submarines. This is an example of a whistleblower case where the wrongdoing is several layers thick, simultaneously exposing American troops to a heightened risk of harm and violating the federal False Claims Act.

While not all whistleblower cases offer a reward for the person who stepped forward to expose the wrong, this case is a type of whistleblower lawsuit where the party who filed it on behalf of the government could receive compensation if the government collects damages resulting  from the fraud committed against it. Whistleblower lawsuits that contain this type of reward for the whistleblower are called “qui tam” lawsuits.

The whistleblower in this case witnessed the faulty coating application and subsequent false certification during the course of their employment at the shipbuilding company. Many individuals work in jobs where their work and the work of others in their workplace can have an impact on the safety of others and the integrity of contracts. The Mississippi Whistleblower Protection Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC support whistleblowers in their efforts to protect the health and safety of Americans and to expose fraud. To learn more about whistleblower protection, call 1 (601) 790-1505 to arrange an initial consultation with the Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC.

The good that can come from whistleblowers doing what they do can come in many forms. Sometimes, the information that whistleblowers bring out into the open brings awareness to safety risks, some of which could be life-threatening if they are allowed to persist. One such situation happened recently when a whistleblower exposed fuel risks that could endanger the lives of Navy pilots and other people.

The whistleblower, Glenn Schwartz, was a civilian aeronautical engineering technician. Schwartz got fired recently but not before he exposed the fuel safety risks and other serious hazards. He said that his managers placed him in a position that he was underqualified for, and that they attempted to qualify him by providing on the job training that could not adequately prepare him with the training and knowledge that he needed to safely perform the highly technical work that he was performing in his job. Schwartz’s job was calibrating equipment that gets used to test weapons systems and aircraft support equipment, which is certainly not a job that just anybody can do.

Not only is Schwartz unqualified, his placement in the position that he got placed in violated Navy regulations that specify in detail the credentials that are required to get qualified for certain positions. Unfortunately, Schwartz wasn’t the only individual who got placed in a position that they were unqualified to fill. There are others at the Fleet Readiness Center- East and the Metrology and Calibration Laboratory who lack the training, experience, and education that they need to perform their work properly. When you consider the work that gets done at these facilities – maintaining Navy aircraft and testing weapons systems, it is easy to see the safety risks posed by unqualified workers performing jobs that they do not know how to do properly. Those safety risks are the reason that the Navy has detailed regulations regarding qualifications for positions, and Schwartz played a significant role in exposing his employer’s violations of those rules.

The United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is investigating Schwartz’s firing, as it was possibly an act of retaliation against him. He got fired in early June, and his attorney says that the reasons cited for his dismissal, which is mostly related to attendance procedures, are things that would not usually get cited as a reason for dismissing someone. That assertion would support a conclusion that Schwartz’s firing was retaliatory, but it is important to note that the OSC’s investigation into the matter is not yet complete.

The Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC support whistleblowers in their efforts to keep people safe and expose dishonesty, misconduct, and even violations of the law. The consequences of exposing wrongdoing in your workplace can be harsh, but your actions could make a significant and potentially life-saving difference in the lives of others, as Mr. Schwartz’s situation illustrates. If you want to learn more about whistleblower claims, call 1 (601) 790-1505 to arrange an initial consultation with the Mississippi Whistleblower attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC.