The Merit Systems Protection Board is not the only forum to challenge OPM’s breach of its settlement agreement with a fired employee. He now gets his day in the claims court to seek monetary damages according to the appeals court.
A balky website for filing appeals with the MSPB is turned aside as an excuse for missing the filing deadline by both the Board and the appeals court. The employee is therefore out of luck in trying to challenge her removal.
A VA employee is fired for verbal and physical abuse toward an elderly patient.
The first time around the agency mitigated a proposed removal to a 2-week suspension. This time it mitigated a proposed removal to a demotion. The employee unsuccessfully argued double punishment, but the MSPB and the appeals court say “not.”
A Customs employee took his removal to arbitration and got it mitigated to a reprimand. The arbitrator refused, however, to grant attorney fees and the appeals court has now upheld that refusal.
One can almost detect the appeals court’s exasperation with the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Office of Personnel Management as it sorts out this tangled mess involving one deceased Forest Service employee, two surviving spouses, lengthy state court litigation, and an effort by OPM to make one of the women reimburse annuity payments she received erroneously-even though she had already paid them over to the other spouse.
An employee scored a big settlement with the IRS but tried unsuccessfully to challenge the agreement’s requirement that she resign by a date certain. Her play to set the resignation aside as involuntary did not get far.
An enforcement officer found himself in hot water when caught being married to two women at the same time and allowing a third woman and her child to use his federal health benefits plan as his wife and stepdaughter. See how the arbitrator and the appeals court ruled.
Another divorced spouse fails to dot the I’s and cross the t’s and finds herself without a survivor’s annuity from her ex’s federal pension.
A letter carrier got a little too bullish in dealing with unpleasant working conditions at the agency and now finds he is out of a job. Read how.
