Guard sues subdivision over firing

A Calaveras County woman has sued the Forest Meadows Owners Association alleging she was fired from her job as a security guard due to her commitments as a military reservist.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 27 in Calaveras County Superior Court, alleges the association is guilty of military service discrimination in the September 2008 termination of Michelle Carpenter, a senior airman with the Medical and Dental Squadron of the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
   

“I think their conduct there was reprehensible,” said Carpenter’s Sacramento-based lawyer, Lawrance Bohm. “It’s hard to believe they did this.”

Calls and e-mails to David Turner, president of the Forest Meadows Owners Association; Bob Nethery, a former board president who signed Carpenter’s termination letter; and other members of the board of directors were not returned by press time.

“We have no idea,” said Kristina Fillmore, the association’s financial administrator, who was not aware of the lawsuit before being contacted.

Bohm is seeking about $10,000 in lost wages to-date, plus damages for a dismissal that the suit claims left Carpenter, who has a 5-year-old daughter, “depressed,” led her to seek counseling and forced her onto unemployment benefits.

The amount of damages is “up to the jury,” he said, adding that he imagines the association should put away at least half a million dollars for liability exposure.

“I would hate to be on the opposite side of this kind of case at a time when Americans are dying overseas,” he said.

According to the lawsuit, Carpenter informed the association staff when she was hired in early 2008 that, as a reservist, she had to report for one weekend training session each month and at least one two-week training session each year.

Her boss, General Manager Sarah Masters, “indicated there would be no issues with Carpenter missing certain work days to fulfill her military,” reads the suit.

In July, Carpenter was ordered by the Air Force to attend a 14-day training session beginning Sept. 1. A few days later, she told staff at the association the news and left a note on the desk of her direct supervisor, Security Manager Veronica Lind, according to the suit.

Near the end of the training session, Lind called Carpenter at Travis Air Force Base and, upon finding she had another military training on the weekend of Sept. 20, told her to pick up her schedule when she came back to the area, according to the suit.

When Carpenter returned on about Sept. 26, she ran into a recently hired guard named Mike, whose last name she did not know, according to the suit.

“Mike informed Carpenter that she was not on the schedule, moreover, he informed Carpenter he was under the impression he was hired to work Carpenter’s hours,” reads the suit.

About Sept. 28, arriving at the association to pick up her schedule, Carpenter discovered “the gate keys had been deactivated and the door locks changed,” reads the suit.

In a meeting a few days later, Lind told her “she had done her job well and that she was a ‘great employee,’ however, they were terminating her because she had too many guards on staff,” reads the suit.

Bohm said the association had five guards during Carpenter’s tenure there, hired one before firing her and kept five after her dismissal. There are now either three or four guards working at the association, Fillmore said Thursday.  

Carpenter was also given a termination letter dated Sept. 24 — about four days before the meeting with Lind — and signed by Bob Nethery, then president of the board of directors.

It reads: “Due to scheduling conflicts, in respect to the fact that you are unavailable during your specified work weekends, we are terminating your employment with FMOA.”

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 requires employers to hold jobs for up to five years while military personnel are called up for duty.

Service members and guards with questions about the law often contact the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a Department of Defense organization set up to resolve disputes, said Major Melissa Phillips.

In total, the organization receives some 12,000 inquiries a year from guards and their employers, she said, about 16 percent of which the organization takes on as cases. Bohm said his client contacted the Department of Justice, not USGR, and was directed to get counsel.

Eighty percent of USGR cases are resolved, which is the goal, while the rest are resolved through other means, like lawsuits, Phillips said.

And the protection only stretches so far, she added.

“Right now, in this tough economic time, the law does not say that a reservist or guard member cannot be terminated for economic downsizing,” she said.