Read summaries of court cases and decisions that impact federal employees and retirees.
Score this recent published decision by the Federal Circuit as a big and clear win for the fired Customs and Border Agent and his legal team. He could not convince the agency, the Administrative Law Judge, or the Merit Systems Protection Board. But that does not matter because he definitely convinced the court that he had been too harshly treated.
A lawsuit filed by a man in Cleveland says that he packed his mother’s remains in his suitcase to fly to Puerto Rico to spread her ashes there according to her wishes but found a very unpleasant surprise when he arrived.
There are plenty of ways to mess up a divorce decree so that a surviving ex-spouse cannot claim a survivor annuity. This recent case is yet another example of what not to do.
Even though a spouse of forty years was entitled to her husband’s federal death benefits, her estate could not claim them when the widow died before she was able to sign the paperwork.
In yet another case involving the current wife and ex-wife fighting over a federal retiree’s survivor’s annuity, the appeals court finds error in handling by OPM and MSPB and bounces the case back for another round. See why.
Historically, federal agencies have used what is known as the “mailbox rule.” This maxim provides that if a notice or letter is properly addressed and duly mailed, it is presumed to have arrived at the mailing address in due course. However, the author cites cases which illustrate that this does not always work out as an agency would expect.
A supervisor with 44 years of service who failed to follow agency policy when a mail carrier was bitten while on duty ends up losing her job based on this and several other misjudgments in carrying out her supervisory responsibilities.
FLRA often gets its own law wrong in the opinion of the DC Circuit.
On June 3, the D.C. Circuit again reversed the FLRA for interpreting a law other than its own. The case, involving the negotiability of union proposals limiting Agency Inspector General investigations to procedures bargained with a union, demonstrated the Court’s continuing refusal to defer to an FLRA interpretation of a law other than the one it administers. The author suggests practitioners read the complete decision but addresses the highlights in his article.
When employees are not happy, employers – often unwittingly – pay the price. The author says that federal agency managers must not lose sight of this as they strive to operate with smaller and smaller budgets.
