Whistleblower’s Fight Winds Down Hearing Ordered To End Battle Between Ruud And Contractor

At an unusual hearing this week, Hanford’s most famous whistleblower will ask for damages from the company that laid him off after he had testified to Congress about serious safety problems.

U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich personally ordered the hearing to conclude a long legal battle between Casey Ruud and Westinghouse Hanford Co.

Regional activists plan to show their support for Ruud by attending the hearing, which starts today in Richland.

They are critical of U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary for not forcing Westinghouse to end the legal wrangling.

“Casey’s the poster child of Hanford whistleblowers. Hazel O’Leary has praised him, and yet she has allowed this litigation to continue. We want to know why,” said Tom Carpenter, a Seattle attorney with the Government Accountability Project, a public interest group that represents whistleblowers.

Westinghouse’s defense will be paid by taxpayers under an arrangement that dates back to World War II, when the government began to pay the legal bills of nuclear contractors.

Last year, Congress and the General Accounting Office criticized the huge tab the Department of Energy allowed its contractors to charge to taxpayers in whistleblower cases.

The Clinton administration agreed to issue guidelines cutting legal bills by 60 percent. But the GAO still had concerns because much of the cost-control effort remains in the hands of the contractors.

Westinghouse hired a Seattle law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, for the Ruud case, said company spokesman Craig Kuhlman.

The firm has handled all phases of the case, and there are “strict cost controls” on the legal bills, Kuhlman said.

Neither the Energy Department nor Westinghouse could say how much has been spent on Ruud’s case.

Ruud, a former Hanford safety auditor, received instant fame in 1986 when he went public with his reports on two plutonium factories he said were unsafe.

Ruud’s revelations led to an immediate shutdown of the Plutonium Finishing Plant and a safety probe at the PlutoniumUranium Extraction (PUREX) plant.

In June 1987, Westinghouse took over the main Hanford contract from Rockwell Hanford Co., Ruud’s employer. In October of that year, Congress asked Ruud to testify about his safety concerns.

Westinghouse laid off Ruud in early 1988 after Congress had canceled the high-level nuclear waste repository project on which he was working.

After he accepted a $115,000 settlement from Westinghouse in 1988, Ruud claims, the company continued to harass him at another job at a nuclear weapons site in South Carolina. Labor Department began an inquiry into the case that same year.

Ruud’s settlement with Westinghouse was confidential, but in 1989, then-Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole told Westinghouse to submit a copy. By law, such agreements must be approved by the labor secretary.

Westinghouse refused to divulge the settlement, saying the Labor Department lacked jurisdiction. That dispute kept the Labor Department inquiry alive.

The issue remained unresolved when Labor Secretary Reich took office in 1993. In April, he ordered this week’s hearing to determine whether Ruud was mistreated.

Ruud is seeking punitive damages for harassment and for being “fraudulently induced” to settle with Westinghouse.

Westinghouse will not comment on the case, Kuhlman said.

Last year, as part of O’Leary’s efforts to honor whistleblowers, DOE picked Ruud for a high-profile job overseeing the problem-plagued Hanford tank farms.

But Ruud would take his old job with Westinghouse back if the judge orders him reinstated, said his attorney, Robert Jones.

“That would be justice for Casey,” Jones said.

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