Reservist Upheld on Suit Alleging Dismissal While in Gulf

A federal court judge this week refused to dismiss a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by an Army Reserve major who alleges that he was fired from his civilian job while serving in the Persian Gulf War.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence T. Lydick denied a motion filed by Loral Aeronutronic Corp. and Ford Motor Co. to dismiss Maj. Stephen McConnell’s complaint that the companies violated a federal law when they sent him letters of termination while he was in the Gulf. (The California Military and Veteran Code protects activated reservists from the possibility of being fired while they are on duty.)

“We are disappointed in the court’s ruling today, but we recognize that it is only a minor setback in the very early stages of the litigation,” Loral Corp. said in a statement issued Friday by its New York office. “We are confident that the final judicial disposition will vindicate our position.”

While serving in the Mideast as an Army supplies contractor, McConnell, 38, of Mission Viejo received several letters from both Ford Aerospace and the company it was later sold to, Loral, stating that he had been “terminated” under company policy for military leave.

After McConnell publicized his firing, officials at Loral apologized for the letters, said they had made a mistake and told McConnell that he could resume his position as a subcontracting administrator at its Newport Beach plant. Loral also paid him the difference between his military pay and salary at Loral for the time he served.

McConnell, however, refused the offer of his job back because he was “disillusioned” by the company’s treatment of reservists.

“When I came back, they still were not offering me a job, and it took days of public information before they were pressured” into offering his job back, McConnell said Friday. “I was so disillusioned because they had terminated me while I was in the combat zone. . . . I could not go back to a company that treated their employees in such a way.”

Although he is now unemployed, McConnell said he will not return to Loral because “I have no assurance that if I went back to work for these people and if . . . the country calls me back to war again, they may not do the same thing again. . . . That’s not something that I want to go through again.”

Among other points in their motion for dismissal, Loral and other defendants in the case allege that McConnell would have gotten his job back if he had asked, but he didn’t. Therefore, they argue, he was not wrongfully injured by the termination.

However, Lydick, in his decision Tuesday, said nothing in the federal law “requires that a party apply for re-employment before making a claim under that section.”