A jury sided against one of Hanford's earliest whistleblowers Thursday, saying Westinghouse Hanford Co. did not fire Inez Austin during a reorganization in 1996.

The company's documentation of its handling of Austin was more convincing than Austin's memory of the how she finally left the company, one juror said.

Austin became a whistleblower in the late 1980s when she started reporting problems at Hanford's radioactive waste tanks. She was harassed at work and reached a settlement with Westinghouse over her treatment in 1990.

In the new case, attorneys for Austin argued her immediate supervisor, Dave Reber, privately told Austin she would be fired for reporting problems while he simultaneously constructed a paper trail that said otherwise.

Westinghouse attorneys countered by saying Austin was not fired but rather she simply refused to follow the same rules as everyone else during a massive restructuring.

The trial in Benton County Superior Court lasted about 112 weeks, but the jury needed less than a day to reach a decision.

It wasn't hard, one juror said.

"Was she fired or not? Plain and simple," he said.

In the end, the company's documents were more persuasive than Austin's memory of events from four years ago, he said. It's the Herald policy not to name jurors who do not want to be identified.

"It was the paper trail more than anything," he said. "It wasn't really difficult."

Austin could not be reached Thursday afternoon for comment. Her Richland phone number is unlisted and a woman who answered the door at her house said Austin wasn't home.

The lawsuit named Westinghouse Electric Corp., the corporate parent of the old Westinghouse Hanford Co.

Fluor Hanford replaced Westinghouse as the nuclear reservation's lead contractor in October 1996.