Tax Counsel
Well-Known Member
What the case law says is you made the complaint in bad faith, i.e. you knew the complaint was not valid, then you lose the protection of the law regarding retaliation for that complaint. If you reasonably believed that the complaint was valid but it turned out the complaint was weak that is generally not bad faith and you'd be protected.
The problem is, you only get your day in court if there are issues present that require a trial or hearing to resolve. If your complaint on its face, for example, does not establish a valid claim then there is no need for a trial because the judge already knows you can't win because your own claims of what happened don't meet the requirements for the claim. You lost on summary judgment. That means that the judge looks at the case and basically asks "if everything was as the the employee claims it was, would he win?" If the answer is no, the employee wouldn't win, then summary judgment is given to the agency because there is nothing for a hearing to determine, i.e. there is no material relevant fact in dispute that the court needs to sort out first before deciding the case outcome. In short, if you can't win based on your version of the facts and the undisputed evidence then there is no point to a trial.
You may think that your case was a good one. Employees usually have a strong belief that they were wronged and think that it should be obvious to everyone else, too. But the problem is that you have to present evidence to support the claim, and others may not see that evidence the same way you do.
Again, you have the option to go to federal court over this if you don't like the administrative appeals process and are convinced that the reviewing officials are biased against you. Going to court is expensive, but you'd get a truly independent decision on the matter.
