Termination with Intent to Misappropriate, Scientific Fraud, Powerful Adversaries

Hello friends,

I am a biologist who was granted Permanent Residency in the US, based on the "Outstanding Category-E12" of the INS, and recently, a US citizen. I am in quite a situation and a very strong legal recourse appears to be my only option. I need to figure out how to go about it. I have to fight it out with very powerful people supported by the 'Government', for want of a better term.

In a nutshell, my situation arose from a possible cure for a human disease, which was coveted by my then boss, the Chairman of my department, innovatively conceived and developed by me at a major midwest university. The 'cure', though only demonstrated in principle in transgenic mice that expressed the disease, involved the design and development of a new gene that acts like a molecular 'switch'; a cure in the human was far away, but I established the basis for it in mice. In his efforts to disgrace me and get rid of me so that he could misappropriate my work completely, he underhandedly got some colleagues to complain against me outrageously; but because I had absolute proof of my innocence, they had to fire two of my colleagues who were, without my knowledge at that time, carrying out his bidding. Because I suspected, quite late in the game, that all these were orchestrated by my boss, I looked into my personal file at the Dean's office and discovered that he had also forged my performance evaluation downgrading it from 'excellent' to 'average', or less, on all counts; fortunately for me, I had the originals in his own handwriting. Actually, after the originals had been filled in and all text written in by both him and me during the actual 'evaluation', and signed by each of us, he handed me a set of blank forms and asked me to sign them so that he could get his "secretary type in" the forms. I had insisted on keeping a copy of the original and after a brief 'tug-of-war', I got the papers in my hand and made two copies and took one home. I later found that the copy in my office had 'disappeared'. Because the Dean's office refused to help me but was only interested in making sure that I hand over all copies of the original papers, I concluded that my boss would never allow my career to develop and I resigned. Because of the irregularities he had committed, my boss could not pursue or publish my work and in order to resurrect his career the university gave him 74 million dollars of tax payer money to found a new research instituion and appointed him as the Director. Judging from recent events, however, that he has made significant progress on a cure can not be ruled out.

When I was ready to take up another job after about 6 months, I attended a professional meeting in my field and a former senior colleague, a famous scientist at an Ivy League university, asked me "what happened?". I could not explain to him coherently all the facts and so I told him that I will write and email him. I had meant to write a maximum 5 page writeup within a week but the writing was painful. It was only while writing down the various events, the deceit and betrayal skillfully orchestrated by my boss dawned on me. For the first time I understood why it is brutal to put victims of rape and abused children on the stand during trials. Instead of 5 pages, it became 233 pages, after 2 years of writing!. During this time, the University involved national politicians and local police and harassed me, withyout success. When I finally sent my story to my colleague, he asked me to "forgive and forget" and because he was also a 'big shot' and the editor of the premier journal and President of American Society in my primary field, he found me a 'postdoctoral researcher' position in a university in the east coast. Within 6 months, the healthy 50 year old colleague who had helped me died and was cremated.

In the following 3 years, my work at my new work place was, again, outstanding! Because I suspected that my nemesis would follow me to my new job, via my new boss, department and university, I took some precautions that I must hold very discrete at this time. In my new lab, I initiated a new field of work and made many new discoveries solely based on which 3 million dollars worth of grant applications were generated by my boss, without my name figuring anywhere. If I was allowed to write the grants based on my work, I would have secured an Associate Professorship in Harvard. My work involved researching on the function of a protein, 'protein-M'. I found that in mice lacking it, certain ions abnormally accumulate 6-fold in mitochondria. I found for the first time that in these cells another protein, 'Protein-N', not known to exist in these cells, is not only present but is overexpressed 6-fold. I also found that a third protein, 'Protein-O' that is known to excrete ions from the cells is physically bound by 'Protein-N', via a unique mechanism, incapacitating its excretory function leading to abnormal ion accumulation. I also found that 'Protein-N' also binds 'Protein-M'by the same mechanism and this binding sequesters 'Protein-N' away from 'Protein-O' allowing the latter's excretory function. Thus the relative binding of the three proteins preserve the homeostasis of these ions in cells and it is dependent on ion concentration detected by 'Protein-N' which has an ion-sensitive domain in its structure. Moreover, 'Protein-N' is also an enzyme that I found activates 'Protein-M' by phosphorylation at a specific site in its structure; all these are gound-breaking with potentially multiple future grants and multiple publications. These should have given me a faculty position in a good university and funded a major lab of my own.

However, one fine day, my boss said that the department made a mistake and failed to secure my salary for the rest of the year and let me go. I worked an additional couple of months without pay upon his request. He promised that he would support me for a faculty position at other places. I have applied for about 200 positions since and did not even get any interviews. The only interviews I got were from places that I did not give him as a reference and sent my applications from secret locations; but I never heard from them after the interviews when I had to tell the interview committee the details of previous employment. Somehow they know all my activities even if I conducted them from the west coast, although I have noticed a delay in their actions to invalidated all my efforts. I believe that they are using everything in their capacity, short of using unmanned drones, to gather information and my future course of action. During the process of publication of my papers after my leaving, my boss added some additional work that he claimed to be the 'critical piece' that gave the work significance enough to get published, but in order to achieve this he actually indulged in provable scientific fraud. Recently I found out the letters of references that he wrote on my behalf were all such that my contributions were minimized and claimed them to be his ideas and that I was merely carrying them out; privately he had told me that whatever I did in the lab belonged to him, implicating me to be a 'serf', against all NIH and funding agency guidelines. The Chairman of the department avoided talking to me and would literally run when he saw me during the last year of my sojourn in the department. After I was let go I met the Dean confidentially and asked him for some funds for my salary to continue my work and he assured me that he had enough funds to support me at least for a year and asked my permission to talk to the Chairman to arrange continuation of my salary and that was the last that I heard from him. Unbelievably, during the second year of my work at the lab my boss was awarded a major award by the White House which I know is a bribe.

I can prove everything that I have said above about my work and the dynamics with my bosses (and more). But it would be a Herculean task to get this to the courts because they know that they would lose. It would take some powerful lawyers willing to work under duress. The lawyer that I have been interacting with for more than 5 years, I found out, has been working for them all along; luckily, he doesn't know most of what I know of most events. They have defamed me, the latest one resulting in removing me as an expert reviewer by the premier journal in my field. But whatever it is that they have said about me, they can not say in the courts; they would be proven to have lied. Their only option is to make sure that the courts fail me either by not allowing a case to get there or by getting my lawyers to cooperate with them at all costs. The only thing that they would do when they know who my lawyers are would be to 'show' evidence of incredible wrong-doings on my part to my own lawyers but convince them not to tell me what they are (or to others that can be proved that this is what they have said) and get them to betray me. Those 'evidences' are fake and would not stand up in court. I believe that they would everything in their power to not allow me to testify.

I am at a loss to know how I can proceed. I want legal redress and I prefer not to settle for anything less. I think that I can actually prove that my intellectual acumen and innovations are worth more than my two past bosses put together and more! (Although, I am happiest to have just $20 in my pocket but working in a lab with thoughts of my own). I would be truly grateful for all thoughts on the matter.

Anan Roberts, Ph.D.
ar5@inbox.com

The reason you're not getting any replies is because your post is WAAAAY too long. If you'd care to cut it down by 75% to the essentials of the issue, I expect you'll get some responses.

First you need to edit off your name. Second, you need to re-write your entire post including only the essential information that you believe supports any legal claims that you are intending to make.

The only claim so far is that you have been defamed by your previous employer. However you have failed to provide the statements that they used, so we cannot offer opinions on them.

All of the rest of the post is just ranting. No one here is interested in reading about protein genes, etc.

I read through it all and understood it. Unfortunately, I don't think that he has any recourse in response to what happened to him.

Your boss likely had the authority to re-write his performance review. And the R&D done is just that, R&D. Nothing went out as far as a product to the public so there is not "public" aspect to a wrongful discharge -- events that occur in an R&D environment have no public concern that would rise to a cause of action.

Plus, they had a valid reason -- no funds to pay him. So even if he did have a possible cause of action it would easily be thwarted by the lack of funds defense.

The public policy exception is quite narrow to the employment at will doctrine. There have been cases against Pfizer regarding wrongful termination that was successful ... the OP may wish to review that case .. filed in Federal court ~ 2006 in CT.

This is also highly state specific .. and the OP does not state his location. The R&D business is an adversarial one; it looks like the OP's findings have been disregarded by others, others who have this authority to conclude.

So, I don't see any recourse for the OP but he is free to consult with a lawyer.

I suggest you review the contracts you signed with these institutions. You will likely find you agreed all work done there, becomes their property and you have no claim to it.