u/Forest_Mage1410

TL;DR: Spouse works part-time clinical role at a large healthcare employer in OR. Same manager who signed her offer letter, approved every tuition reimbursement (last one early January 2026), and rated her "Meets Expectations" on all goals in her 2025 year-in-review (verbatim manager comment: "achieved a Patient Connect engagement rate above 85%, ... with 98%") opened a disciplinary track 91 days later demanding 85% engagement. Multiple written contradictions from the director who took over the escalation. ~$40K clawback exposure if she resigns or is terminated for-cause; bonus clawback has a narrow "Code of Conduct violation" trigger only. Goal: get terminated without cause or negotiated separation. Looking for OR employment attorney recommendations and a strategy sanity check.

Background

Spouse hired in January 2025, part-time at 20 hrs/wk, healthcare employer based out-of-state with OR field operations. Compensation includes:

• $30K sign-on bonus with 36-month clawback. Trigger: voluntary termination OR termination "for reasons that constitute a violation of the Code of Conduct." Narrow.
• ~$10K in tuition reimbursement payments for a post-master's certification, with 24-month clawback. Broader trigger ("violation of company policy").

Combined exposure ~$40K through approximately February 2028.

Manager's documented certifications of satisfactory performance throughout 2025-early 2026:

• Signed offer letter
• Approved every tuition reimbursement form (~6-10 separate approvals). Each form requires manager to certify "Are you currently on a Corrective Action Plan? N." Most recent approval: early January 2026, ~91 days before the disciplinary meeting.
• Approved a $799 CME subscription on Jan 15, 2026 (~84 days before)
• Wrote spouse's 2025 Year-in-Review Evaluation rating her "3 - Meets Expectations" on all four goals AND on the overall rating. Manager's verbatim written comment: "achieved a Patient Connect engagement rate above 85%, successfully meeting the established performance benchmark with 98%." Also wrote: "100% compliance with licensure, credentialing, collaborative agreements, and MyLearning."

The escalation, starting April 2026:

• Manager opened first disciplinary meeting with "explain to me what's wrong with you" (per spouse; manager later denied phrasing in a follow-up meeting)
• Manager's first disciplinary email (April 10) demanded a minimum visit count, an 85% engagement target, mandatory commute exclusion of 1.5 hours each way, and email-monitoring requirements. None of these are in the offer letter.
• Spouse pushed back in writing. Manager deferred to her supervisor (a Director).

The Director's escalation produced multiple written contradictions:

• Initially cited a clinical playbook last revised 14 months after spouse's hire date, in a section governing temporary traveling clinicians (not spouse's permanent locally-hired role)
• Wrote on April 21: "I reached out to leadership last week due to difficulty finding guidance on commute for non travelers. The [policy] is being updated to include commute language. Once the policy is updated, it will be shared with all [team] employees." Explicit written admission that no applicable policy existed.
• In a later email (May 7) reversed this: "[Employer's] policy has been in place since at least 2000." Same person, in writing, 16 days apart.
• Cited an "expense and travel policy" as authority for excluding commute time from work hours — but the policy is literally titled "Global Travel & Expense Policy" and on its face addresses tax/expense reimbursement, not wage compensation
• Just opened a formal Employee Relations case (ER updates expected this coming week)

Other relevant facts:

• Spouse was locked out of a required clinical software for ~10 months (with documented outreach attempts during the lockout)
• Verbal assignment radius commitment at hire (≤50 miles from home base) was exceeded by an actual assignment (53 miles), implicating Oregon's 30-mile rule under OAR 839-020-0045
• A full-time peer on the same team and same manager has confirmed the commute-exclusion rule is NOT being applied to her
• Numbers have shifted: commute exclusion claimed at 1.5 hrs → 1 hr → 90 min → "IRS rules" → "since 2000" over a 27-day span. Visit minimum: 10 → 9. Engagement target: 85% → 88%.

Spouse's actual goal: she'd welcome being terminated without cause. She already has another full-time clinical job lined up. She's only still working at the current employer to avoid the $40K clawback. Voluntary resignation = lose $40K. For-cause termination on Code-of-Conduct grounds = lose $40K. Termination without cause = keep $40K.

Current strategy: make any potential for-cause termination so legally exposed that the employer's HR/Legal pushes leadership toward without-cause termination or mutual-release separation. The strongest evidence (the written admissions, the IRS/FLSA category error, the narrow Code-of-Conduct clawback trigger) is being held for attorney-led delivery. We're sending a short factual-corrections email this week (no legal arguments) to address mischaracterizations in the Director's most recent message before they harden into accepted facts in the ER record.

Three questions:

1. Oregon employment attorney recommendations. We've reached out to Schuck Law, Meyer Employment Law (Meyer Stephenson), Brian Buchanan, HKM Portland, and Eric Wilson at Oregon Employment Law without a firm engagement yet. Most contingency-only practices seem to want post-termination cases. Are there Portland-area firms or solo practitioners who handle pre-termination cases on hourly/retainer for situations like this — bonus clawback enforceability + manufactured-cause defense + Oregon wage-and-hour issues?
2. Sanity check on the corrections email. Plan: send the offer letter (the Director requested it), then a short factual-corrections email addressing three specific mischaracterizations in the Director's most recent email (visit-minimum reduction my spouse didn't request; Tuesday-mandatory schedule she didn't agree to; "not following policy" framing she didn't say). The email also references the 2025 evaluation as a fact (not a legal argument). It does NOT deploy any of the strongest legal arguments — those wait for counsel. Is sending the corrections (without counsel-review) the right play, or should we hold even those?
3. BOLI complaint timing. Oregon's inter-facility travel rule (OAR 839-020-0045) plus the 53-mile assignment past the 30-mile threshold seem to support a wage-and-hour complaint. Filing with BOLI doesn't require an attorney. Useful additional pressure to file pre-termination, or premature/risky?

Open to any other read on whether we're missing something obvious. Thanks in advance.