Retired Marine Sues Former Employer for Defamation

[Andara Bledin]

Article at the Wall Street Journal

Summary of the lawsuit:
Retired Marine and Medal of Honor Recipient Dakota Meyer worked for BAE Systems. When he learned that his employers offered their products (they're defense suppliers) to Pakistan, he emailed his concerns to his supervisor, Bobby McCreight. McCreight then started harassing Meyer, who resigned his employment and applied to be rehired at a former employer, Ausgar. Although Meyer had been told by his contact at Ausgar that he was cleared, his rehiring had been blocked by what Mr. McCreight told the Pentagon program manager, including claims that he was "mentally unstable" and "had a problem related to drinking in a social setting" as well as comments that he failed to perform his assigned tasks.

Also according to the lawsuit (the actual filing, but not reported in any of the articles), Meyer never received any disciplinary or other reprimands while working for either Ausgar or BAE.

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[Sleepwalker]

Ohhhh lord. That is a bucketfull of stupid right there.

[Greenday]

Seeing as how this discussion can dive into a sensitive nature, I'm stuck putting up a disclaimer for once. Everything I say is my opinion and my opinion only. What I say is not the opinion of my company, the military, or the government. At no point will anything I say be something I've learned as a result of work.

Read that last night. For those who don't immediately recognize the name, Meyer is the ONLY marine to have been awarded the Medal of Honor in Afghanistan. First marine in a long time to get one in fact.

First off, bashing a Medal of Honor recipient, when you are a major defense contractor, is not a good way to get more business. Medal of Honor recipients are kind of a big deal.

As far as them dealing stuff out to Pakistan, while it may be legal, it's a dick move. Pakistan not only lets terrorists camp out in their country, but are most likely helping them out in other ways too. Pakistan is extremely uncooperative in the fight against terrorism and it would appear they don't really care about stopping groups such as the Taliban. For BAE to be selling top equipment such as these sniper scopes is completely irresponsible and reckless. As a result, they will be aiding our enemies in killing our soldiers and our allies out here.

I applaud Meyer for not standing for this and for doing the right thing. I wish him all the luck in the world.

[Hyena Dandy]

First off, bashing a Medal of Honor recipient, when you are a major defense contractor, is not a good way to get more business. Medal of Honor recipients are kind of a big deal.

There's a difference between bashing and claiming someone is an unproductive worker. Medal of Honor recipients shouldn't be allowed to coast through the rest of their work on that. Its a big deal, and I'm not trying to say it isn't. But it shouldn't be the only thing someone ever has to do in their life. The idea that you can't say something bad about a medal of honor recipient could be WHY he never received disciplinary action.

That said, while I think its totally possible they didn't want to be 'the company that fired the Medal of Honor guy' and thus never disciplined him, that sounds really unlikely in this situation. He could have been a terrible worker, or a drunk, or any number of terrible things. But I doubt that that's the situation, I very strongly doubt it.

You might not take formal disciplinary action against a guy who won the Medal of Honor for P.R. reasons, but if he was a problem worker then you, as his supervisor, would have told him to get his act together. And since this is the digital age, you would have kept a record of having told him that. This lawsuit would be completely unfounded because there would be records that you were dealing with a problem worker.

Instead, it seems to me that you've got a conflict of interest. There's a man who puts his country first working for a company that puts its money first. The guy doesn't like that, and says as much. And the company acts like an asshole to him, so he leaves, and then they realize "Shit, this could look REALLY BAD." And it could look even worse if he goes to work with a rival company. So they do what, I would guess, they think they can get away with.

What they don't realize is that this isn't a relatively anonymous former marine, this is a guy with a national platform. As Greenday said "for those who don't recognize the name". I don't recognize the name, but I was raised by hippies, and with a severe anxiety disorder and a lackadaisical work ethic, would probably be the last guy you want involved in the military. I don't want to be in the armed forces because I've got too much respect for people in that line of work to think I could do it.

That said, I'd also guess that anyone who IS involved knows who Dakota Meyer is. With a national platform, that's the sort of guy that anybody should know they don't mess with. He has the goodwill and the resources to fight back.

So while its not impossible that a Medal of Honor recipient could be a drunk or a poor worker, this specific one certainly doesn't seem to be. He's defending his country, and himself. And so for that, I salute him.


Did any of that make sense? I'm really tired

[Greenday]

There's a difference between bashing and claiming someone is an unproductive worker. Medal of Honor recipients shouldn't be allowed to coast through the rest of their work on that. Its a big deal, and I'm not trying to say it isn't. But it shouldn't be the only thing someone ever has to do in their life. The idea that you can't say something bad about a medal of honor recipient could be WHY he never received disciplinary action.

I'm not saying he should be able to skip through life without having to work. He should definitely be able to go to the bar and not have to pay for drinks but he should still have to work. My problem is that they fired him for being mentally unstable and for drinking problems. Besides BAE, no one seems to have noticed these problems that BAE thinks are so bad that they HAD to make him unusable to other companies.

[Andara Bledin]

My problem is that they fired him for being mentally unstable and for drinking problems. Besides BAE, no one seems to have noticed these problems that BAE thinks are so bad that they HAD to make him unusable to other companies.

They did not fire him. He chose to resign from the company because he felt at odds with their business practices.

The only reason he's taking action now is that due to the direct action of the supervisor as an agent for the corporation, he was denied the ability to join his former employer in a new capacity for which he is apparently a good fit.

Copy of the complaint as filed (hosted at Google docs)

Meyer worked for AUSGAR for 9 months. Then resigned to accept a position with BAE. Two months later, after a month of belittling and overmanagement by McCreight, Meyer gave standard notice of his intent to resign from BAE, which he did. At no point had he ever received any disciplinary action while at BAE, excepting an email from McCreight asserting his control over Meyer's activities (regarding a meeting that the President of the Division initiated). Meyer's manager while he was working at AUSGAR has nothing but high praise for his performance with them and his contact regarding the new position was ready to have him join the team until the Pentagon contact received the verbal statements from McCreight alleging an inability to perform his job.

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[Greenday]

They did not fire him.

A clear typo on my part. As I said, they created all sorts of crap to make him look bad and now they are going to get shit on for it which is what they deserve.

[Andara Bledin]

As far as I can determine, there isn't a they, just one person who is an ass and is going to cost his company quite a bit of money and bad press.

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[Greenday]

As far as I can determine, there isn't a they, just one person who is an ass and is going to cost his company quite a bit of money and bad press.

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It was his supervisor who created the lies about him, was it not? Clearly those above his boss could get rid of the supervisor, punish him, something and try to patch things up.

The problem is BAE is one of the biggest defense contractors in the world. We have too much invested in them to do much about it.

[jackfaire]

Depending on state law the supervisor who said those things about him unless listed as personal/professional reference could be illegal.

In the state I work my former employers are legally bound to only be allowed to share, when I was hired and when I stopped working. They cannot share why I left the job nor anything about my performance.