Guardsman's firing spurs federal suit

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Thursday against a former Ogden company and its owner on behalf of a Utah National Guard member.

The suit against Synapse Data and Telecom Inc. and the company's owner, Matthew Mossbarger, alleges that the company violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. The USERRA prohibits employers from terminating an employee if the employee's service or obligation for service in the uniformed services is a motivating factor in the employer's action, the Justice Department said.

According to the complaint, Jose A. Ortega of Layton worked as a network administrator for Synapse. Ortega enlisted in the Utah National Guard in April 2008 and was given orders to report for basic training in May of that year.

Ortega informed Mossbarger that he had enlisted and attempted to provide Mossbarger with a copy of his orders to report for basic training, but Mossbarger tried to convince Ortega to go back on his enlistment, according to court documents.

Ortega was then fired from his job when he declined to withdraw from the National Guard, the complaint says.

But Mossbarger told the Deseret News Thursday that the issue is not that black and white.

Mossbarger said that after starting the company in 2004, he had sunk close to $35,000 into the company and hired Ortega in an effort to grow it. The two were the only employees of the company for close to an eight-month period.

Mossbarger said that when Ortega informed him that he had joined the National Guard, the company was in the midst of coming to terms in a deal with people who were planning to invest in the company. Mossbarger said that when Ortega approached him he was worried, because the investors had not officially signed the deal, and Ortega was the only other stable employee.

"It was a really weird chain of events," Mossbarger said. "So I asked him if he could give me some time to be able to circle the wagons financially and get some other things going."

But the investors found out that Ortega would be leaving for a few months in order to do basic training and decided not to invest, Mossbarger said.

At that point, Mossbarger felt there was no way he could continue to not take a paycheck, as he had been doing for several months, and knew it would be almost impossible to keep Ortega on as an employee, he said.