By Ken Snyder
At this point, it was not looking very promising. I had nearly resigned myself to the point that if this was going to go forward, I was going to have to go it alone. I couldn't figure how I could spot these glaring examples of their wrongdoing, back them up with legal casework that corroborates my position, and the lawyers wouldn't be interested. I decided to dig further.
During my deployment, Captain Sam Wright of the Reserve Officer's Association in Washington D.C. referred me to Ms. Kathryn Piscitelli, a noted employment lawyer in Florida and co-author of The USERRA Manual. While the book was not cheap, and truly written for other lawyers, it opened my eyes to aspects of my case I had not thought of. I sent Ms. Piscitelli an e-mail asking her if she would review my case and give me recommendations based on her review.
I used Ms. Piscitelli's book to highlight areas that appeared relavent to my situation. The copy of the DOL's file was read over and over, and each time I found more and more things that just didn't add up. While BPU was content to say "nothing was done improperly" (and DOL was more than happy to go along with it) I couldn't help but notice that every other evaluation they presented as "evidence" was filled out completely but my 21 June evaluation. In my case no official paperwork inside BPU between people in charge specifically said there was a recommendation to terminate me, but in both examples they sent DOL there were specific papers recommending termination, and the reasons behind it. The other two people that received termination letters had their papers sent to the same people mine did, but my letter was also sent to two attorneys with McAnany, Van Cleave & Phillips -- why?
When I finished this round of my investigating I would up with even more questions. But would I ever get answers to them?
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