This Bad Boss Claimed That His Elected Position Made Him Unaccountable for His Sexual Behavior
By the time Amy Ogle was hired in 2016 as a deputy court clerk in Anderson County, Tenn., her new boss already had been accused of sexual harassment — and already had claimed that he was above discipline, according to later court testimony.
As an elected official, County Clerk William Jones boasted, “I could sit in my office butt-naked with the door open and masturbate, and there is not a thing you can do about it,” he told the county’s then-HR director, the HR official testified at a trial.
Yet Anderson County kept on hiring women to work for Jones — which is how Ogle ended up receiving unwelcome “booby hugs” and a flood of lewd comments, propositions, and partially nude photos from her boss, often via the Snapchat app that he had personally installed on her phone, she testified.
When she resisted his advances, Ogle told jurors, Jones reassigned her to an outlying office and told her she’d be stuck there “until [she] got out of [her] shyness.”
Later, as she tried to return to work from a prolonged medical leave, Jones met her in an Arby’s parking lot and pressed her to sign a statement that he’d never harassed her, she testified.
She declined.
Williams Jones is our Bad Boss of the Month.
Ogle filed a lawsuit against the county and against Jones personally. In July 2024, a federal jury awarded her almost $6 million in damages, of which $4 million was against Jones as an individual. The parties settled her claims during mediation at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the case was finally dismissed last month.
Ogle was born and raised in Anderson County, which is north of Knoxville and home to the Museum of Appalachia. Before taking a job with Jones in late 2016, she had been a stay-at-home mom for about 11 years — but at age 35 with two daughters and a faltering marriage, Ogle testified, she decided to “start trying to make [her] own money.”
Her first desk was behind a half-wall, and she testified at trial that her new boss would pull up to her on a rolling chair and rub her upper thigh. Jones did the same to other women he employed, a former co-worker told jurors, leading the women to hide his rolling chair so Jones couldn’t use it.
But the chair reappeared the next day, the co-worker testified, with “a sign on it to the effect that, if the chair is moved again, you’ll be fired.”
Jones had been elected to a four-year term as county clerk and took office in the second half of 2014. Quickly thereafter he was reported to Anderson County’s HR department for inappropriate behavior — including one incident in which he insisted on watching a female employee eat yogurt, which he said was a fetish of his — and the county had transferred at least one complaining worker out of his department, according to court documents.
Still, the county took no disciplinary action against Jones and its mayor said she didn’t want to start a legal proceeding — an “ouster suit” would be the only way to remove the clerk from office, jurors heard — because she feared a “political storm,” the county’s former HR director said in court.
“That’s just the way it is in local government,” the mayor told the HR official, according to testimony.
And so Ogle arrived in an office where her elected boss called himself “daddy” and insisted that female employees give him “booby hugs,” where he would press his chest against their breasts, Ogle testified.
Jones had told several of his female employees to download the Snapchat app to their phones — and he installed it on Ogle’s phone himself, she testified, using it to send her unwelcome texts, photos, and propositions.
Unlike many other apps, Snapchat doesn’t leave much of an electronic trail: Messages get deleted automatically, and senders are notified if a recipient tries to save anything.
“There was some pretty vulgar things that he would send, and I would try to save them,” she told jurors. “He would tell me … ‘You need to delete it now, or else you’re fired.'”
Ogle was afraid to complain, she testified, because she needed to stay employed. By February 2017 her marriage was headed toward divorce; she and her children were sleeping on an air mattress in a friend’s living room.
“I was the only income coming in at this point for my two kids,” she said at trial.
In March 2017, Jones gave Ogle a new job with a private office — and he quickly became a regular visitor.
“He would come in with porn … and shut the door and show [it] to me,” Ogle testified. “And then he would sit back and laugh. And then he would make sure to tell me that he was an elected official, that no one could touch him.”
At one point, Ogle testified, she thought she was alone and went under her desk to adjust her computer wiring. When she emerged, she said, Jones was sitting in a chair with his legs spread. “Your head looks good right there,” she told jurors that he said, “but it would look even better if it was on this” — indicating his crotch.
“I was scared,” Ogle testified. “I forced my way out around him … jumped up, and [ran] out. … I was crying uncontrollabl[y].”
Later that same day, Ogle said in court documents, Jones asked her to meet him at a nearby Git’N Go gas station. In court, she testified that Jones said he wanted “sex or oral sex.”
It wasn’t the only time Jones suggested meeting at the Git’N Go or elsewhere, according to testimony. Each time, Ogle deflected: She had to meet her children after work. Once, worried that Jones would shadow her, Ogle asked her parents — who were babysitting — to bring her girls to the office parking lot, jurors heard.
Other employees got similar propositions, according to testimony, including proposed visits to a nearby tanning salon owned by Jones’ wife, whom he called “mama.” A former intern told jurors that Jones asked her to join him and “mama” in a threesome.
In court documents, Jones denied any harassment or wrongdoing.
The Snapchat messages became more frequent, Ogle told the court. One evening, while she was on an out-of-town trip with her daughters, Jones gave her an ultimatum to send him a “booby picture” or else report to work at 8:00am the next morning, on pain of firing — even though he had already approved her vacation time, she testified.
Intimidated, she sent him a bathing suit photo. A few weeks later, she said in court documents, she finally deleted Snapchat from her phone and told Jones she wouldn’t meet him outside work. Jones promptly moved her to the clerk’s Oak Ridge office — known among employees as the “graveyard” — and told her she’d get no more raises, Ogle testified.
“He kept telling me that until I got out of my shyness, I was going to stay there,” Ogle told jurors.
Ogle and her co-workers had few routes to complain about Jones. According to testimony, the clerk had opted his entire office out of Anderson County’s anti-harassment policies, calling them “bullshit,” and instead channeled most complaints to him or his chief deputy.
Eventually Ogle went on medical leave due to the onset of Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear condition sometimes caused by stress and fatigue. She did extensive physical therapy to combat her symptoms, which included dizziness and blacking out, but her leave expired before her doctor cleared her to return to work — meaning that Jones could now decide whether she’d be reinstated, she testified.
By this time, Jones’s behavior toward female employees had burst into public view — including in a lawsuit filed by the former intern who claimed he had propositioned her for a threesome. The clerk had been condemned by the county commission and faced a challenge for reelection.
Still on leave but anxious to restart work, Ogle was surprised when Jones called her and asked to meet in the parking lot of the local Arby’s. Unable to drive because of her medical condition, she asked her new partner to bring her, she testified. Jones was waiting in a car with his wife, she told jurors; amid a downpour, she scooted between vehicles and sat in Jones’ back seat as he requested a written statement saying that he had never sexually harassed her.
Ogle interpreted it as a quid pro quo for her reinstatement, she testified, although Jones claimed in court documents that he “unconditionally” approved her return to work.
“I told him that I would sign,” she told jurors, “because I was in fear, once again, terrified of losing my job.”
As soon as she left Jones’ car, however, she changed her mind. Instead, she contacted Anderson County’s HR department, with whom she had organized her medical leave, according to testimony. She returned to work in a different department, away from Jones — and within a few months, Jones was gone, having been defeated at the polls.
Ogle continued to work for Anderson County for another year, but she suffered lasting effects from her stint with Jones. The partner who had driven her to Arby’s, and whom she married in 2020, told jurors that she remains uncomfortable around male supervisors and “goes into complete panic mode” whenever she runs into Jones in the community.
“She’s trying to get out of the building,” he testified. “She’s, like, ‘We got to get out of here! We got to get out of here!’“
Last year, jurors awarded Ogle almost $6 million in damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Tennessee Human Rights Act, an amount that the trial judge reduced slightly due to a legal cap. Jones was ordered to pay $3 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
Section 1983 provides a federal cause of action against state or local officials who deprive people of constitutional rights. It allows bad actors to be sued individually — although they are generally indemnified by their employer if they act within the scope of their employment.
The terms of the subsequent settlement at the Sixth Circuit weren’t revealed.
At the time of the trial, Amy Ogle (now Amy Carr) had started working for the sheriff’s department in neighboring Union County, in a role she may have found familiar from her days with Jones.
“My title is animal control,” she testified.
» Read the complaint filed by Ogle’s co-worker
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Ogle v. Jones. 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.
Ogle was represented by attorneys from Collins Law PLC, Knoxville Attorney PLLC, and the Law Office of Ursula Bailey.