Regular readers know that a central event in our
Legal Schnauzer story came when
I was unlawfully terminated at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in May 2008. Now my wife has been cheated out of her job, too.
Overwhelming evidence indicates that I was canned because individuals in Alabama's right-wing power structure
did not like the content of my blog, which has helped expose corruption among Alabama judges and lawyers.
I have audiotaped evidence that suggests I was fired because of my reporting on the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
Mrs. Schnauzer, as we have come to call her here, might have become a target of the same political forces. But she does not think that's the case. She thinks her unlawful termination can be traced to unscrupulous debt collectors, who we are suing under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA). In fact, she testified under oath to that effect
in a deposition on Monday.
Until about a month ago, September 25 to be exact, Mrs. Schnauzer (MS) worked at
Infinity Property and Casualty Corporation, a Birmingham-based insurance company. Here is how Infinity's Web site describes the core business:
Infinity Property & Casualty Corporation (NASDAQ: IPCC) is a leading nonstandard personal auto insurer. Nonstandard auto insurance provides coverage to drivers who, due to their driving record, age or vehicle type, represent higher than normal risks and pay higher rates for comparable coverage.
In other words, if you are a really crappy driver, you might need to know about Infinity. Given the number of really crappy drivers on the road, the company's business has been strong, even during the Bush recession.
One reason Infinity's performance has been pretty good in hard times is that my wife worked her butt off for the company. What was her reward? A bogus pink slip.
I've made a couple of references in recent posts (
here and
here) to unethical conduct against us involving Infinity Property and Casualty. And I tied it to
our FDCPA lawsuit against NCO Financial Services, a Pennsylvania-based debt-collection company, and Birmingham law firm Ingram & Associates. Those earlier references were to this career "hit job" on my wife.
MS worked in a variety of administrative positions at Infinity over almost three full years. Her most recent position was in Salvage, which deals with financial transactions involving wrecked autos that adjusters have deemed "totaled."
Infinity is based in Alabama, but it does relatively little business in the state. Its largest numbers of insured motorists are in California, Florida, and Texas.
Why do I say that MS was cheated out of her job? Numerous factors point in that direction, but let's consider this for starters: Her designated start time for several months had been 9 a.m. But beginning in June of this year, various superiors asked her on at least a half dozen occasions if she would be willing to move her start time to 9:30 in order to help better serve the company's large customer base in California, which has a two-hour time difference from Alabama.
Each time the subject was raised, MS said she would be glad to start at 9:30. Several coworkers told her they also had been approached about the change but could not do it because of child-care issues.
MS's primary supervisors, Greg Kees and Tobin Lunsford, finally announced in a staff meeting on June 26 that she had "graciously agreed" to start working at 9:30 to help cover the California customer base, the company's largest and most profitable. Roughly a dozen people were present at the meeting.
MS started arriving at work around 9:15 or 9:20, always in plenty of time for her new shift. On September 16, Greg Kees called her into his office and told her she was receiving a written warning and being placed on probation. The reason? Kees alleged that she had been tardy some 35 times, all since the June 26 meeting.
As most rational people probably would be in such a situation, MS was dumbfounded. "But you told me, in front of the whole group, that I was to start working a 9:30 shift to help with our California customers. You said that all of the changes announced that day were to take effect immediately. I did what you told me to do."
Kees did not deny making that statement. But get this: He said she was showing up as tardy in the company's eTime system. That, of course, is because he had failed to make the change in the system, which was his responsibility. In other words, MS was being placed on probation because of her supervisor's incompetence.
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www.legalschnauzer.blogspot.com
I live in Birmingham, Alabama, and work in higher education. I became interested in justice-related issues after experiencing gross judicial corruption in Alabama state courts. This corruption has a strong political component. The corrupt judges are (
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