A federal district court judge in Tennessee has again refused to allow a group of more than 20 people to join a COVID-19 lawsuit filed by fired contractors at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site.
U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough rejected a motion for reconsideration filed last month by prospective plaintiffs who say they too were wrongly terminated by Amentum-led UCOR. The group sought inclusion in the COVID-19 firings case brought by Carlton Speer, Melana Dennis and Zachariah Duncan, who had refused vaccination on religious grounds.
In the four-page ruling, the judge said “the fact that some courts have allowed intervention at later stages of litigation does not compel the court to allow permissive intervention in this case.”
The motion for reconsideration fails to explain “how intervention by twenty-two additional plaintiffs, each with highly fact-intensive claims requiring extensive discovery, would not substantially delay the resolution of Plaintiffs Carlton Speer, Malena Dennis, and Zachariah Duncan’s claims,” McDonough said.
UCOR also has an interest in prompt resolution of the existing case, even if it must subsequently defend itself in a new lawsuit later on, according to the order. It is not it is not “patently unfair” to require intervenors “to proceed as any other plaintiff normally would.
The 22 people seeking inclusion to this case “could have brought their claims individually at the time they were terminated [in 2021], as is the normal method of litigating claims,” Judge McDonough wrote. “If they had done so, many of their claims very well might have already been resolved on the merits by now.”
