boilerpilot

Lawyer up. You resigned under economic duress due to their refusal to allow you to utilize FMLA, therefore you have a legitimate case. Make sure you have a paper trail with the FAA regarding your medical, a paper trail with the company regarding FMLA/extended sick leave, and make sure you have some sort of documentation saying that you could not have anticipated your medical problems at the time of signing the contract, or at least that you had every indication that said medical issue would be resolved without having to resign from the company.

Unfortunately for your friend, voluntary resignations due to reasons such as a better offer or low compensation at RAH are not going to be legitimate cause to dispute the training bond. Better offer indicates a definite lack of economic duress and low compensation was disclosed before his/her signing. Economic duress will be the best argument against the company, tied with the slightly less prevalent hostile working environment, which will have to be even better documented than economic duress.

Case history of people not being pursued for their owed training bond is unfortunately dominated by people being terminated or furloughed for reasons out of their control. When you talk to a lawyer, I strongly suggest you show him/her the link to the Great Lakes case that was linked earlier in this thread, as it is a good recent example of a case like this, and will shorten their time in formulating a case for you.