Few (if any) laws set out an exact decision procedure thorough enough to determine precisely whether it applies in every possible case, and if so, the correspon

Few (if any) laws set out an exact decision procedure thorough enough to determine precisely whether it applies in every possible case, and if so, the corresponding response to be mandated. In this particular case, the issue was what counted as consequential damage from the illegal actions. The VA argued that as the whistle-blower was working on renewable one-year contracts, the lost earnings were fully compensated for by back-pay up to the end of the contract in effect at the time. Her lawyers argued her firing interrupted her research, prevented her from publishing on it and damaged her reputation in a way that could have impacted her future employment. While this issue could be framed as being one about how much evidence is required here, I feel that, more importantly, it is a rejection of the VA's premise, which amounted to the claim that the end-date of the plaintiff's contract set a horizon beyond which no harm could be attributed to the VA's illegal actions. While this ostensibly only applies to workers on fixed contracts, I imagine the same principle could be applied in other cases where the employer attempts to limit the scope of damages to the specific position held by the employee at the time of the infringement.