A California court has ruled that a former employee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory can sue the University of California system under the state's whistle-blower law.

Michelle Doggett, the former employee, says that she left her job at Livermore because the university system and the laboratory's top-level managers retaliated against her for alleging billing fraud and other misuse of laboratory research funds.

The university claimed that Ms. Doggett had no right to sue under the whistle-blower law, because she had not worked through all of the laboratory's internal review procedures before filing her lawsuit in 2000.

University officials had asked the court to dismiss her claim. "We believe that Ms. Doggett didn't exercise all of the internal grievance processes she should have," said Gordon Yano, a spokesman for the Livermore lab. "We didn't believe this was a matter for a court, and we didn't believe Ms. Doggett, in fact, was a whistle-blower."

On Thursday, Judge James A. Richman of State Superior Court in Alameda County turned down the university's request, which means the lawsuit may go to trial in September.

The Oakland Tribune reported on Saturday that Ms. Doggett, in 1999, had taken a stress-related disability leave from her job as manager of energy research funds at the Energy Department lab, which is operated by the California university system.

The University of California system also manages the Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos National Laboratories. The university system has come under fire for lapses in oversight and a record of poor management at the Los Alamos laboratory. Those alleged failures led the Energy Department, in May, to announce that it would take competitive bids when the university system's contract to manage the Los Alamos lab expires in 2005 (The Chronicle, June 9).

By filing as a whistle-blower, Ms. Doggett would have to meet a somewhat lower standard of proof than the university when it comes to deciding in court whether she was the victim of retaliation by her former employer.