Witness granted right to sue

Supreme Court reinstates ex-Healthmaster employee's lawsuit challenging his 1995 firing

Web posted December 15, 1998

By Dave Williams
Morris News Service

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reinstated an Augusta whistle-blower's federal lawsuit challenging his firing.

Michael Haddle, 44, an ``at-will'' management employee of the now-defunct Healthmaster Inc. home health-care chain, was fired in 1995 after cooperating with a grand jury investigating the company for Medicare fraud.

Mr. Haddle's lawsuit charged that he was dismissed in retaliation for cooperating with investigators and to deter him from testifying in the criminal trial, in violation of a Reconstruction-era civil-rights law aimed at discouraging tampering with federal witnesses.

But two lower federal courts ruled that at-will employees -- who serve at their employer's discretion -- have no constitutional rights to their job.

Without such legal protection, the courts said at-will workers have no right to recover legal damages for deprivation of property.

In Monday's unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with Mr. Haddle, ruling that even at-will employees can sue over firings allegedly carried out to keep them from testifying in federal court against their bosses.

``The gist of the wrong at which (the civil-rights law) is directed is not deprivation of property, but intimidation or retaliation against witnesses in federal court proceedings,'' Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the decision.

Mr. Haddle was not fired by his former bosses -- Jeannette G. Garrison and Dennis J. Kelly -- who later went to jail. The lawsuit charges that because the company had filed for bankruptcy, the defendants had a bankruptcy trustee carry out the firing.

Now that Mr. Haddle has won the right to sue, the case will return to U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia for a trial on the merits of his claims.