A firing from the 1990s is still unresolved, and his own job hunt could shrink the payout
A DC agency pushed out an employee who flagged "waste, fraud, and abuse" - decades later, a court says a jury must set the damages.
The case began in the 1990s, when a longtime District of Columbia Lottery employee started flagging problems. Hired in 1985 as an auditor, he rose to security systems administrator by 1996. But his relationship with supervisors "quickly began to sour," according to the court, after audits he oversaw turned up what he thought was "unethical, if not illegal, behavior" at the Lottery Board.
He kept raising concerns through the summer of 1996. His supervisor responded with a series of actions that ended his career there. He was moved from a protected Career Service role into a job already marked for elimination, then told the position was gone. A brief temporary assignment ran out in early 1997, leaving him without work.
He sued in May 1997, arguing the District denied him due process before effectively ending his employment. The employee has since died, and his daughter now carries the case as representative of his estate. After years of appeals, the courts found the District liable: his procedural due process rights were violated when he was reassigned to a position slated for elimination without notice or a hearing. An appeals court concluded the Lottery's executive director had acted as a "final policymaker" for the District, making it responsible for his "constructive termination without due process."
With liability settled, only the size of the payout remained. In a decision dated August 7, 2026, the court denied the estate's request for summary judgment on backpay and sent the question to a jury instead.
The judge pointed to real disputes a jury must resolve. One is whether the employee did enough to find new work - a duty known as mitigation. He waited nearly two years to apply for a job, and after one unsuccessful try never sought a similar role again. His side argued he was too unwell to work, citing a doctor's letter describing "a severe emotional condition brought on by work related conditions." The other dispute is how much longer he would have stayed. He once testified he planned to work until 65; a later affidavit said until 30 years of service, or age 68. He actually kept working elsewhere until age 70.
For HR leaders, the case is a reminder that skipping notice and a hearing before an adverse action can carry a bill that grows for decades - and that an employee's own job-search efforts can shape what that bill finally looks like.
