This Bad Boss Dared Jurors to Award Millions to an Employee He’d Demoted and Fired. They Did.
At trial, Henry Reaves said he’d be “the dumbest lawyer in America” to retaliate against a legally savvy employee in the way he was accused of doing.
The jury’s verdict? Yup, Reaves did it.
Reaves had hired Andrea Jaye Mosby — an employment lawyer with decades of experience — to be the “Chief People Officer” at his law firm in Memphis, Tenn. Soon after her arrival, Mosby approached him about possible violations of workplace laws. Instead of engaging, however, Reaves got angry and accused her of being disloyal and a “manipulator,” according to testimony.
Jurors heard that Reaves then stripped Mosby of her title and duties, told her to fire her own mom, and ordered her to work as an intake person to learn how his law firm worked. This “immersion training” lasted just three days before Mosby herself was fired — purportedly for missing a deadline that was set in an email on which it turned out she wasn’t even copied, according to testimony. In total she had worked at Reaves Law Firm for less than a month.
Henry Reaves is our Bad Boss of the Month.
Mosby sued Reaves Law Firm, alleging that her firing was illegal retaliation under multiple laws. In May 2025 a federal jury agreed and awarded her almost $3.3 million, including $2.5 million in punitive damages; the judge later ordered Reaves Law Firm to pay Mosby’s legal fees and costs, too. The case is currently under appeal.
Mosby’s short tenure at Reaves Law Firm was a stark contrast to her previous job, a distinguished 18-year stint at Memphis Light, Gas and Water, first as in-house counsel and then as a human resources leader. Mosby was well-compensated at MLGW, she testified, and she could have retired in a few years. But she itched for a new challenge, and a colleague connected her with Reaves, a local personal injury lawyer who needed help managing HR at his fast-growing practice.
After a couple of talks with Reaves, Mosby was won over. “I believed the story that he told me,” she said at trial. “I believed him when he said he was, you know, a … champion for the downtrodden. … I wanted to work somewhere where I could make a difference. It was time.”
Mosby joined the firm in May 2022, and Reaves had been effusive in his praise of her at an introductory staff meeting.
“I had to get my team also to believe in her,” he told jurors, “and I wanted them to also be comfortable to come to her if they had any type of problems.”
It worked: People started coming to Mosby with problems. And it didn’t go well.
The first issue arose during the interview process for a new attorney. Mosby had asked the male candidate for his salary expectations, according to testimony, but Reaves butted in: “Let’s just cut to the chase. I want you and we are willing to bring you in at $85,000.”
One of the other interviewers took Mosby aside, Mosby testified, and told her that a comparable female attorney at the firm earned far less — a possible discrimination issue. When Mosby informed Reaves, she testified, he said he didn’t care.
“Who have you been talking to?” she told jurors that he asked angrily. “Why are you always telling me what I can’t do?”
Then Mosby raised another issue: She’d been approached by Reaves’ new executive assistant, who believed she was being asked to do inappropriate tasks outside work hours — including work related to a movie Reaves had financed and family tasks assigned to her by Reaves’ wife Neva, who was the firm’s “Chief Experience Officer.”
Mosby’s main concern, she testified: Whether the assistant was legally entitled to overtime for any after-hours work. Again, the discussion didn’t go well.
“It got heated,” Mosby told the court. “He started screaming at me. … I did not feel comfortable.”
Reaves could have responded differently to Mosby’s concerns, jurors heard: As it turned out, some of the information that she’d heard — such as the female attorney’s salary — was wrong. Instead, as he admitted in testimony, Reaves questioned her loyalty.
“I’m not perfect,” Mosby told jurors. “I based my information on what was told to me. … If I’m wrong, then okay, but don’t tell me I’m disloyal because I am advocating” for employees.
At the time, Mosby was struggling in her personal life. She was battling her ex-husband in a “never-ending custody case” and her grandmother — whom Mosby had taken in and cared for — died shortly after she started work at Reaves Law Firm. Mosby grieved at her new job but took time off only to attend the funeral, she testified.
The day after the ceremony, a Saturday, she received an email from Reaves, jurors heard:
“Over the last few weeks it has been glaringly obvious that you will be unable to fulfill the requirements of your position without making a serious investment and learning exactly what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.”
Effective immediately, Reaves said in the email, he would assume Mosby’s HR duties on an interim basis. Meanwhile, Mosby would spend seven months in “immersion training” to learn the ropes at the law firm, an assignment that Reaves had never required another executive to do, Mosby testified.
Her first task: Report to work on the intake team.
Reaves also told Mosby to fire her 70-something mother, whom she had just hired as a part-time recruiter — with the law firm’s full knowledge and permission, Mosby testified.
Plus Mosby was supposed to prepare a transition document. Reaves told other executives that the document would be delivered on Thursday — just three working days later, as Monday was a holiday — but he never informed Mosby of any deadline, she testified.
Mosby didn’t want to be out of a job, she testified, so she showed up for intake work and started knocking off the other items. Nonetheless, on Thursday evening, Mosby received a termination email from Reaves’ wife Neva. Mosby’s failure to deliver the document that day was an “act of insubordination,” the email claimed.
At trial, Reaves testified that Mosby’s firing was his decision. In testimony, both Reaves and his wife listed other reasons why Mosby should have been terminated, including a claim that she had skipped out on intake training — which Mosby strongly denied.
Reaves insisted that none of his actions were retaliatory said that, even in retrospect, he’d fire Mosby again, “One hundred percent, definitely.” The termination was legal, he told jurors.
“An attorney who would illegally fire a labor law employment attorney who has 25 years of litigating for an illegal reason, I think that would be the dumbest lawyer in America,” he told jurors. “I think that would be the dumbest lawyer in America. … Hey, hey, say it. I’m dumb, ain’t I?”
Reaves ended his testimony at trial with a bold invitation to the jury: “It is illegal to retaliate,” he said. “And if the jury feels that I retaliated, I want them to give every single dime that you [Mosby’s attorney] ask them to give.”
In his closing statement, Mosby’s attorney asked the jury to award Mosby three separate amounts that added to $3,274,807.81.
The jury gave her that amount — not just to the dime, but to the penny.
» Read Mosby’s amended complaint
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Mosby v. Reaves Law Firm PLLC. We select “Bad Boss” cases to illustrate the continuing relevance of employee protection laws for our newsletter’s audience, which includes attorneys and former TELG clients.
Mosby was represented by Donati Law, PLLC in Memphis.