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 Ogle’s complaint
» 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.
These Bad Bosses Handed Over an Employee’s Job to the Very Person She Complained Was Undermining Her
In 2005, Lauren Pinter-Brown became the first female director of the lymphoma program at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The well-respected scientist’s task was daunting: To revive a faltering program while also teaching at UCLA, seeing patients, and conducting clinical trials. Meanwhile, one of her male colleagues began undermining her and even physically intimidating her while he campaigned for her job, according to court testimony.
When she complained to her supervisors, Dennis Slamon and John Glaspy, they told her that the other doctor’s bad behavior was a symptom of her poor leadership — and then they, too, began to treat her with less respect, she testified.
At one point, Glaspy connected Pinter-Brown with a UCLA doctor who was supposedly designated to field sex-discrimination complaints, but who told her that she had a reputation as “an angry woman” and advised her simply to avoid the problematic colleague, according to testimony.
Slamon and Glaspy also put Pinter-Brown’s academic work under a microscope, she testified, culminating in a year-long suspension for supposed research failings and her removal as program director.
“We don’t want somebody like you to be the face of the UCLA lymphoma program,” Slamon told her, she said in court.
Her replacement? The undermining male doctor.
Pinter-Brown suffered in her reduced role, she testified, feeling depressed and ignored by her bosses. She finally felt compelled to leave UCLA in 2015.
Dennis Slamon and John Glaspy are our Bad Bosses of the Month.
Pinter-Brown filed a complaint against UCLA in California state court, claiming gender-based discrimination and other wrongs. In 2018, a jury awarded her more than $13 million in damages — only for an appeals court to overturn the verdict, saying that the trial judge had shown bias toward Pinter-Brown.
A do-over trial took place in 2024, and this time Pinter-Brown won even more: $14 million. UCLA has said it will appeal.
Until her tainted departure, UCLA had been a force for good in Pinter-Brown’s life. As a kid in junior high and high school in Los Angeles, she hung out on the university’s campus “every weekend,” she testified. She worked as a candy striper at the medical center, helped with lab-rat experiments during college summers, and later went to medical school at UCLA.
Her interest in lymphoma, too, was long-standing. In junior high, she got to know a classmate whose hair was falling out from treatment for a form of the cancer; they stayed friends until he died in his forties.
“I really was puzzled and intrigued … by how that can happen to a kid, and what it was all about,” she told jurors. “It … started my interest in lymphomas and I was only 13.”
By 2005, Pinter-Brown had become an expert in T-cell lymphoma — an aggressive form of the disease — and worked at a medical center affiliated with UCLA, conducting clinical trials and sometimes teaching students at her alma mater. She was an early adviser to several lymphoma foundations, she testified, and was on good terms with the UCLA program’s original director.
The program was a part of UCLA’s hematology-oncology division, overseen by division chief Slamon and assistant chief Glaspy, both cancer doctors. After a period during which the original director moved overseas and the program stagnated, Slamon hired Pinter-Brown to take over.
Pinter-Brown inherited a “ghost town,” she told jurors, and at first, Slamon and Glaspy were impressed by her performance. In court, they described her as professional, diligent, and patient-focused. After long days in the clinic, she’d spend nights evangelizing UCLA’s cancer services to local physicians and sorting through old trials that hadn’t officially been closed, she testified.
But a male colleague in the program, Sven De Vos, soon became a hindrance, initiating long chats with Pinter-Brown during work hours, talking “about nothing” as he “sprawled out” in a chair while her patients waited, she told jurors. When she finally asked him to stop socializing because she didn’t have time, his attitude changed.
“He became very oppositional every time we met as a group,” she testified. “If I had said it was day, he would [say] it was night. He talked over me. He didn’t look at me. … He would get angry and walk around the room. … One time he turned his chair around with his back to me for [a whole] meeting.”
De Vos also failed to follow group decisions, Pinter-Brown testified, and he often committed program resources to new clinical trials without consulting her. After about 18 months on the job, during which she received stellar reviews from her colleagues, Pinter-Brown finally complained to Slamon and Glaspy — saying that she believed De Vos was disrespecting her authority because of her sex, according to testimony.
A UCLA administrative employee who attended many meetings with Slamon and Glaspy agreed with Pinter-Brown. She told jurors that De Vos had openly said he’d never answer to Pinter-Brown; that he was lobbying for Pinter-Brown’s job; and that he seemed both dismissive and angry toward women.
Slamon and Glaspy’s main response, according to testimony: To advise both Pinter-Brown and De Vos to steer clear of each other.
Raising the matter seemed to damage Pinter-Brown’s stature with her bosses. On one occasion, according to court documents, Slamon told her that mutual dislikes are normal and “you just have to suck it up.” During a meeting, according to testimony, Glaspy mouthed to Pinter-Brown, “Everybody hates you.”
Some of Pinter-Brown’s successes went uncelebrated. When a drug that she had championed in trials won approval for use against peripheral T-cell lymphoma, she was “so excited,” she told jurors — yet Slamon didn’t respond to the news at all, while Glaspy curtly replied via email, “Should we care?”
(In court, Glaspy said he didn’t remember the exchange but “it may have been a bad joke.”)
The relationship deteriorated further in 2010, Pinter-Brown testified, when she complained that she was being paid substantially less than her male peers. Slamon and Glaspy said her salary was lower to compensate for an extra nurse practitioner who was needed to handle her heavy patient load, she told jurors — except that, before he hired Pinter-Brown, Slamon had told her that UCLA would cover the cost, she testified.
The following year, Glaspy told De Vos that Pinter-Brown had been complaining about him, according to court documents, and things got even worse.
De Vos chaired a UCLA internal audit committee that began raising concerns about some of Pinter-Brown’s research — which previously had few problems. Although De Vos testified that he believed he “would have” recused himself from any consideration of Pinter-Brown’s work, a witness said he was present for the entire discussion.
The matter escalated to a second UCLA audit committee in which Glaspy played a significant role, according to documents. Meanwhile Pinter-Brown began to feel physically intimidated by De Vos, including an incident during which he yelled and clenched his fists in a “menacing position,” she testified.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” Pinter-Brown told the jury. She ran into an empty room, locked the door, and shoved a chair under the doorknob before starting to sob and shake.
From inside the room, she made several calls before reaching Glaspy, who suggested that she could resign as director and work instead as an individual contributor, she testified — an effective demotion that she rejected. She wanted to lodge a Title IX complaint, she insisted.
Glaspy grudgingly agreed to connect her with the proper person, she testified, and she spoke via phone with an older male cardiologist who mainly told her to go home early. She spent a day writing out a long statement for this cardiologist, who scheduled a longer session to discuss her situation.
This first meeting started confrontationally, she told jurors. The cardiologist opened by saying she had a “rep” at UCLA as an angry woman, she testified, but then he softened and said he’d talk with Slamon and Glaspy and schedule a second session.
The second session started even worse, she testified. “You may be a diva, but you can’t act like that,” the cardiologist said, according to Pinter-Brown. At a later point, the cardiologist held up her statement between two fingers, dropped it into a drawer, and said, “No one needs to know about this,” she testified.
According to testimony, the cardiologist wasn’t a designated Title IX officer for UCLA.
In July 2012, the second auditing committee reached its conclusion: Due to supposed faults in her work, Pinter-Brown’s research privileges were suspended for a year, and she was assigned a mentor — whose conclusion the following year was that Pinter-Brown was “an excellent lymphoma doctor” who was qualified to conduct clinical trials.
Meanwhile, Slamon removed Pinter-Brown as head of the lymphoma program — making his comment about not wanting “somebody like you to be [the program’s] face” — and elevated De Vos, her underminer, in her place, according to testimony.
Dispirited, Pinter-Brown stopped fighting back. On her desk, she told jurors, she kept a framed illustration of how to survive a brown bear attack. It was a reminder, she said, that she needed to “play dead” at work.
“I felt like I was in a hangman’s noose,” she testified. “The more that you struggle, the tighter the noose gets.”
The failed audit and demotion were stains on her record, she told the jury — even though they resulted from an internal UCLA process, not a more-serious FDA audit. It became harder to do research, she said, and she was no longer asked to give lectures.
Ironically, according to testimony, Slamon had himself failed an FDA audit but wasn’t demoted and “never suffered adverse consequences,” in the words of a judge’s opinion.
Pinter-Brown’s thoughts edged toward suicide, she said. After almost 30 years under care for a genetic heart condition, she stopped taking her medication.
“I wanted to die,” she told the jury. “I just wanted to disappear.”
Months at a time passed without her speaking to Slamon — but one day, she testified, she found herself in an elevator with him. She tried to make small talk, she said, but he ignored her except to say, as he exited, “You’re still here?”
Feeling like she had no other option, Pinter-Brown finally resigned. Soon afterward she started a new position at UC Irvine, albeit at a lower salary. She was so damaged by her time at UCLA, her husband testified, that she began to avoid the UCLA campus she had loved all her life — declining even to attend arts events there.
“That was her home,” he told jurors. But “since she left UCLA, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the place.”
Driving home from UC Irvine one night, Pinter-Brown began sobbing and felt an urge to veer into the median to kill herself, she told the court. She sought psychiatric help, and ultimately was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety — non-economic harms that accounted for a majority of the damages awarded by the 2024 jury, which found that her gender was a “substantial motivating factor” for being illegally pushed out of her UCLA job.
Pinter-Brown’s jury award is being appealed (again) by UCLA, which according to its Web site continues to employ Slamon and Glaspy.
De Vos remains the director of its lymphoma program.
» Read Pinter-Brown’s complaint
» See the bear-safety illustration that Pinter-Brown kept on her desk
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Pinter-Brown v. Regents of the University of California. 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.
Pinter-Brown was represented by Shegerian & Associates.
This Bad Boss Portrayed Workplace Use of the N-Word as a Big Misunderstanding
[NOTE: This article includes offensive racial terms.]
In 2019, Patricia Holmes was hired as the only Black employee at her office in State College, Pa. Her race quickly became a go-to topic for her white boss, Timothy McCoy — including as an unwelcome punchline, according to court testimony.
When Holmes and her coworkers were testing some N-95 face masks, for example, McCoy laughed out loud at the “ironic” sight of a Black woman donning the white hood that was required for the test. Holmes was appalled that anyone would joke about the Ku Klux Klan, she testified.
McCoy also gossiped with Holmes about his “dark complected” uncle, whom he dubbed “Coonie,” and he tolerated a white co-worker’s vocal complaints that her daughter was expecting an “Oreo baby” by a “deadbeat” Black man, according to testimony.
After being reprimanded for using the N-word in a discussion that was started by McCoy — who said it was all a mixup — the same co-worker taped her own mouth shut in ostentatious protest. When Holmes balked at sitting beside the tape-mouthed co-worker, McCoy accused Holmes of “trying to start trouble,” jurors heard.
A few months later, as Holmes pushed back and McCoy grew increasingly hostile, according to testimony, Holmes resigned.
“I was sick of being treated like that,” she told jurors. “I was sick of being talked to like that. I was done.”
Timothy McCoy is our latest Bad Boss of the Month.
Holmes filed a complaint against her former employer, American HomePatient (AHOM), a provider of home medical equipment, claiming discrimination on the basis of race. A federal jury found for Holmes in April 2024, awarding her $500,000 in compensation and a further $20 million as punishment for AHOM’s failure to prevent or stop the harassment she faced.
In September, a judge reduced those punitive damages to $1 million, citing constitutional limits. Both sides have appealed the outcome.
Holmes began working for AHOM in October 2019. She was 54 years old and a recent Pennsylvania transplant from neighboring New Jersey, where she had worked in customer service jobs since high school — everything from Mary Kay Cosmetics to a Rutgers University lab.
AHOM focused on respiratory home care, providing customers with gear such as CPAP machines, nebulizers, and oxygen tanks. Holmes answered phones at the State College office, handling customer questions, sorting out problems, and helping with orders.
McCoy was Holmes’ boss, the AHOM manager for State College and another office. On just her second day, Holmes witnessed the racially charged tone of his domain — as epitomized by co-worker Beverly Hibbert, whose “Oreo baby” comment came during an official get-to-know-you session.
McCoy’s underwhelming response, Holmes told jurors: “Jeez, Bev.”
Although McCoy claimed at trial that he’d also had an undocumented “verbal consultation” with Hibbert about the slur — and that he heard it from her only once — another co-worker testified that Hibbert talked in racial terms about her grandchild “all the time.”
Meanwhile, McCoy made plenty of his own inappropriate comments at work. When asked about them, one AHOM employee said she scarcely knew “where to even start.”
The KKK allusion came within a month of Holmes’ arrival, according to testimony. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, AHOM employees were required to wear airtight N-95 masks to protect vulnerable visitors. To check the masks’ fit, a respiratory therapist placed a hood over each employee’s head and sprayed in a scented aerosol.
When it was Holmes’ turn, according to her complaint, McCoy said a co-worker should take a picture. Then, as Holmes returned some paperwork to the tester, she told jurors, she heard her boss laughing aloud.
“It’s ironic to see a white woman putting a … white hood on a Black woman’s head,” she testified that he said. McCoy’s casual invocation of the KKK made her “sick to [her] stomach,” she told jurors, and it still makes her cry when she thinks about it.
A month later came McCoy’s unwelcome ramblings to Holmes about his dark-skinned uncle, according to testimony — and then, the following March, an explosive conversation linked to Donald Trump, who was then running for reelection as president.
After McCoy identified himself as a Trump supporter, Holmes testified, he somehow segued into asking her whether the N-word was truly offensive or maybe just a descriptive term for Black people.
Holmes testified that McCoy whipped out his phone to make his point, typing N-I-G-E-R into Google — at which point Hibbert, who also had spoken in support of Trump (and who had lamented her grandchild’s race), jumped in to say that McCoy had spelled the word wrong.
“[Hibbert] said, ‘It’s spelled with two Gs,'” Holmes told jurors. “And then she decided to pronounce it to him as if he was a fourth grade student … And she said, ‘It’s nig-gerrr.'”
“That gerrr still rings in my ears to this day,” Holmes testified, shaking as she recalled it. But “Tim bust out laughing, and so did Beverly.”
In court, McCoy said that he remembers things differently. He was actually Googling a mountain in western Pennsylvania that he thought was called Mt. Niger, he claimed — though he agreed that no mountain is so named, and he couldn’t explain how the subject arose.
On the stand, Holmes called McCoy’s account “a blatant lie.” A co-worker agreed at trial that the exchange was all about politics and the N-word.
That day, Holmes told jurors, was “one of the most humiliating days of my life,” and it forever changed how she interacted with white people, including the man she lived with. A co-worker took her outside to calm down after the incident, but when she returned to the office, she testified, Hibbert got back in her face.
McCoy made a wan effort to break things up, Holmes testified, telling both women to “knock it off,” but Holmes decided to go home instead. On her way out, she cursed at Hibbert and called her a racist — an accusation for which McCoy said Holmes should have apologized.
“After somebody just used the [N-word] in front of a Black person, you’re saying that calling them a racist deserves an apology?” Holmes’ lawyer asked McCoy at trial, with a note of incredulity.
The racial slur wasn’t directed at Holmes, McCoy explained, saying that he believed Hibbert “was trying to clarify something.”
Instead of apologizing, Holmes complained. She reported the incident to an AHOM area manager, who issued a written warning to Hibbert — but not yet to McCoy. Shortly afterward, at work, Hibbert made a show of placing neon green tape over her mouth to avoid saying “the wrong thing,” according to testimony.
At a morning “huddle” meeting, McCoy never mentioned the tape on Hibbert’s mouth. Holmes pointedly sat apart from Hibbert, causing McCoy to ask for a word with the Black woman afterward.
“You’re trying to start trouble in here,” he said, Holmes testified.
Holmes came home that day in despair, she told jurors: She cried, threw up twice, and decided to make a fuller complaint to AHOM’s HR department.
After an investigation, Hibbert was fired, while McCoy got a vaguely worded written warning. The racial comments stopped — but McCoy began retaliating against Holmes, she testified.
McCoy didn’t allow her to participate fully in training sessions, she told the court, or to work overtime. His hostility also became physical, she testified; he snatched papers directly out of her hands, making her scared to be alone with him.
“He was obviously blaming me for everything,” Holmes told jurors. She decided to resign.
After leaving AHOM, Holmes also left the state of Pennsylvania; her relationship with the white man had fallen apart. By the time of the trial, she was working for a smoothie company in New York.
Although the jury found McCoy’s behavior to be unlawful — and said that AHOM had been, at a minimum, recklessly indifferent to Holmes’ rights — Judge Matthew Brann chopped the damages award by $19 million on constitutional grounds. Still, he did so grudgingly and called the trial’s outcome “a banquet of consequences” for AHOM.
Holmes is disputing the judge’s huge reduction of her award, but she already has avoided her worst nightmare.
At trial, she testified that she’d had a troubled dream that the jury would “make me go back to work for American HomePatient” — a company that, as she took the stand, still employed Tim McCoy.
» Read Holmes’ complaint
» Read Holmes’ account of the N-word discussion
» Read McCoy’s assertion that the N-word discussion was actually about a Pennsylvania mountain
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Holmes v. American HomePatient. 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.
Holmes was represented by Bordas and Bordas Attorneys, PLLC.
For This Bad Boss, an Employee’s Accent Spoke Louder Than Her Actions
Luciana Ienciu’s employer told her that she was fired for improper use of sticky notes.
But members of a New Jersey jury saw it differently: It was about Ienciu’s national origin, they concluded, after hearing how her Romanian-inflected speech and writing had irked her boss.
Ienciu worked as a compliance expert for LTS Lohmann Therapy Systems in West Caldwell, N.J., a maker of medical patches and other drug-delivery technologies; her job was to ensure that LTS met standards set by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and other bodies.
Ienciu had spoken English since childhood. After arriving in the U.S. as an adult, she had thrived for years at major drug companies. Still, soon after Sepandad Naraghi became her manager at LTS in late 2015 — just after Ienciu had earned a stellar performance rating and been recommended for promotion — he began mocking her communication skills, according to testimony.
Over the following 18 months, Ienciu said in court filings, Naraghi demeaned her in front of colleagues, sometimes making her cry. He monitored and critiqued the language she used on phone calls and in emails, and he demoted her from a management role she was filling on an interim basis, citing in part her vocabulary.
Finally, after Ienciu used sticky notes to jot down the movement of some drugs because she couldn’t find the proper log sheets — a temporary measure similar to dozens that had happened at LTS without penalty, according to court filings — Naraghi fired the Romanian American for violating company policy.
Sepandad Naraghi is our Bad Boss of the Month.
Ienciu filed a complaint against LTS under New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law, and her case finally reached a month-long trial this year. In early March, a seven-person jury found that Ienciu was wrongfully fired — and that Naraghi had created a hostile work environment based on her Romanian background. Members unanimously awarded Ienciu $1 million in damages.
LTS is contesting the verdict; the judge will hear arguments this month.
Born and raised in Romania, Ienciu began speaking English as a second grader. The language became essential to her progress, helping her to teach international students at a Romanian university where she was a graduate student in chemical engineering. She published her thesis and other academic articles in English.
In 2000, Ienciu and her husband immigrated to the United States, where she completed certificate programs at the prestigious Stevens Institute of Technology. Though she had an accent, Ienciu was fluent. She tutored U.S. graduate students through English, and she built her career at medical companies including Purdue Pharma and GE Healthcare without drawing any criticism for her language skills, according to court documents.
At first there was no problem at LTS either. The company hired Ienciu in 2012 as a supervisor in the department that handled DEA compliance, where she quickly exceeded expectations. In 2013, she earned an “outstanding” rating for her communication skills, according to court documents.
The following year a supervisor called Ienciu a “tremendous asset,” and in early 2015 she was named as the department’s acting associate director, earning her a pay bump and an office. She soon led a successful reorganization, according to her vice-president at the time, who gave Ienciu his highest performance rating and recommended her for a permanent promotion, according to documents.
Then, at the end of 2015, Naraghi took over as her boss. He had no direct experience with DEA compliance, according to his own testimony.
Ienciu and Naraghi had been colleagues at a previous company, but their history didn’t help. Almost immediately, Ienciu told the court, Naraghi began to criticize her accent and vocabulary.
“Since the day he started, he made me feel very uncomfortable,” she said in a deposition. “He was making fun of my language [and] questioning my ability to communicate in English.”
In court documents, Ienciu said that Naraghi played confused when she spoke, and often asked her to repeat sentences. He insisted on joining phone calls with the DEA — to “evaluate” her communication, she said, although he claimed otherwise at trial — and hovered over her as she composed emails, despite having gotten no complaints about her language. To the court, Naraghi admitted critiquing Ienciu’s “phrasing” and “clarity,” but denied it was about her origin or her accent.
Early in 2016, Naraghi told Ienciu that he planned to remove her as the acting associate director and to hire someone else into the slot permanently. According to Ienciu, who was bitterly disappointed, her boss explained that he needed to find someone with better “regulatory language.”
In the end, however, Naraghi promoted an LTS employee with little direct experience in the primary regulatory work of his department, according to his own testimony.
Ienciu’s demotion was a career blow: Once it took effect, she returned to her former title of supervisor, her salary was reduced, and she lost her office, according to court documents. Yet she kept most of her responsibilities, she testified, and even picked up a new one — working on LTS drug labeling.
Before her replacement took charge, Ienciu had helped to prepare her department for a DEA audit. According to an email sent by Naraghi, the government’s lead auditor singled out the soon-to-be-sidelined Ienciu for praise, saying that “of all the pharmaceutical and chemical companies he has audited, the LTS systems are the best he has seen.”
Yet Ienciu’s 2016 performance review rated her as only a “2,” two levels below the highest rating. Although the review was prepared by Ienciu’s successor, Naraghi had supplied much of the wording via a lengthy email that appeared in court documents — and that claimed, among other things, that Ienciu’s flawed communication style “has resulted in [her] losing trust with those she is communicating with.”
Ienciu’s new supervisor copied the rebuke into her review, word for word, despite testifying that she personally had no problem with Ienciu’s communication. At a deposition, Naraghi testified that he had no examples to back up his reproach: It was more of a “feeling,” he said. Asked directly whether he had heard any complaints about Ienciu’s communication skills, he said “No.”
Ienciu flagged the Naraghi-written remarks as unfair, but she also asked for follow-up meetings to track her proficiency, which she said she could “raise to the next level,” according to court documents. No such meetings happened.
And not long afterward came the sticky-note incident.
It happened on a morning when Ienciu was scheduled to attend a training session on the new drug-labeling responsibilities she had assumed. She received an internal request for some fentanyl samples and, despite her impending obligation, Naraghi unexpectedly insisted that she handle the transfer personally, according to documents.
Ienciu complied but found that several of the relevant “chain of custody” forms — a legal requirement when handling controlled substances — were missing. Pressed for time, she jotted data onto sticky notes for later entry in the proper forms. Late entry of drug transfers wasn’t uncommon at LTS, according to court documents, but the use of loose paper such as sticky notes was against internal policy.
After Ienciu’s scheduled training, she was summoned into Naraghi’s office, questioned about the sticky notes, and suspended without pay. She was fired two days later on Naraghi’s authority, despite an intervening email from a DEA official who said that Ienciu’s sticky-note incident was “fine” with the DEA as long she recorded it properly, according to documents.
A subsequent LTS investigation revealed dozens of analogous late entries, most of which had been handled by an Ienciu colleague who wasn’t disciplined, let alone fired, the court heard. That person took over Ienciu’s duties.
Meanwhile, Naraghi testified that he had approved an undocumented drug transfer himself. According to another employee, Naraghi agreed to let an LTS executive “take fentanyl in a suitcase to the airport” without paperwork. Ienciu was the person who identified and halted the error, Naraghi acknowledged; without her intervention he would have exposed LTS to “significant risk,” he said.
The difference between the two incidents, Naraghi testified, was that his own poor judgment was due to a “one-off weird request from my boss.”
“Sometimes people do just make mistakes,” he said — about himself.
» Read Ienciu’s amended complaint
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Ienciu v. LTS Lohmann Therapy Systems Corp. 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.
Ienciu was represented by Barber Law in Morristown, N.J.
This Bad Boss Failed to Act While a Disabled Employee Lost the Simple Tools Needed to Do His Job
After a 2014 medical accident left him a paraplegic, Daniel Callahan struggled hard to regain limited use of his legs.
When he succeeded, he needed just a few more things to resume his long career as a concierge at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, he testified later in court: A decent desk and chair, for instance; a good padded mat so he could stand without much pain; and a break room that wasn’t too far from his work station.
And at first, Callahan told a San Francisco jury, he got most of those things.
But then the hotel started chipping away at his accommodations — and his manager, Scott Garlow, was “contemptuous” in the face of the concierge’s rising dismay, Callahan said in a legal complaint.
Manager Garlow told Callahan that he couldn’t stow his mobility scooter by the concierge desk, for example, forcing him to walk farther — and Garlow agreed that Callahan should stop eating lunch in a nearby storage room when HR accused the longtime employee of being a “security risk” for guests’ luggage, according to testimony.
Meanwhile Garlow gossiped publicly with staff about Callahan’s bodily functions, the concierge told jurors, and he made light of Callahan’s difficulty navigating his workspace.
Finally, during renovations, the hotel replaced Callahan’s desk and chair. No one consulted the disabled concierge and the new furniture made sitting far harder for Callahan, who by then had been diagnosed with a heart condition, jurors heard.
In September 2019, with the ill-suited desk still in place despite repeated pleas to Garlow and others, Callahan’s doctor advised him to stop working at the Marriott — and in a later deposition, testified that the hotel’s lack of accommodation had likely contributed to the concierge’s health crisis.
Scott Garlow is our Bad Boss of the Month.
After quitting, Callahan filed a complaint against the Marriott Marquis, claiming discrimination and a failure to follow the proper accommodation process. A state jury found in his favor last fall and awarded Callahan an eye-opening $20 million in damages; since then the case docket has shown no further litigation.
Manager Garlow never explained himself at the trial; Marriott declined to call him as a witness, and Callahan’s attorneys couldn’t locate him to demand his testimony.
Callahan’s hospitality career had launched along with the Marriott Marquis itself: As a fresh arrival in San Francisco, he had recently enrolled in a hotel management program when a Marriott representative showed up in 1989 to recruit staff for the newly constructed building on Mission Street, which boasted high-end amenities and sweeping views.
Callahan was hired as a banquet server even before the hotel’s official opening. Soon afterward, a spot opened up in the concierge department, which helps guests with advice, local reservations, and special arrangements.
“Right from the get-go, it was the perfect fit for me,” Callahan told the jury. “I felt like I had found a home.”
Callahan loved interacting with guests, he testified: He even spent his personal days helping Marriott to invent new services that could be offered to VIPs, which allowed the concierge department to be profitable for the first time.
He was nominated for multiple awards; served as a board member of the Northern California Concierge Association; and was accepted into Les Clefs d’Or — an international association he told the court is “the pinnacle of being a concierge.”
Throughout all of this, however, Callahan suffered from chronic back pain. He had surgery and later began to get regular epidural injections to manage the problem — until early 2014, when an injection went wrong and injured his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down.
“I woke up as a paraplegic,” Callahan told the jury.
Callahan immediately set a goal, he testified: To regain enough mobility to return to work at the Marriott within a year. His doctors were skeptical, he said, and his young daughter — whom he used to take skiing and boogie boarding — compared him to a monster as he struggled to walk using leg braces and a walker.
The injury’s impact, he testified, had changed his life “like throwing a light switch, and my daughter was scared. I was scared. And that’s another reason it was just so important for me … not to give up. [T]hat’s something I wanted to make sure I showed to her.”
Callahan drew on his grit and returned to the hotel on schedule in January 2015. He doesn’t recall much about his first day back, but he strongly remembers arriving home in his Marriott uniform, just like he used to, and being greeted by his smiling daughter.
“She now had some hope,” he told jurors. “And so did I.”
Callahan had returned to the Marriott with a doctor’s note that explained his needs, most of which were easily met, he said in court.
The existing concierge desk and floor mat were adequate, he testified, and he could eat his lunch in a room behind the nearby bell desk. Though he had previously stood up to interact with most guests, he now needed to sit down more. It was painful and difficult to walk for any distance, and he needed a cane to do so.
Callahan’s electric mobility scooter, which allowed him to travel farther and faster, was a sticking point. Although there was a suitable space available beside the concierge desk, he testified, boss Garlow insisted that the scooter be parked in a storage area — “and that really defeat[ed] the purpose.” He opted not to use it.
Further problems arose. The room behind the bell desk, where Callahan had started eating his lunch, was often locked. At other times, there wasn’t any chair available in the room, or the chairs were stored away on shelves. Callahan wanted Marriott to designate at least one seat there for disabled employees — like Starbucks does for customers, he noted — and he would have liked a key to the room, but Garlow never offered a permanent solution, he testified.
Frustrated, Callahan suggested using a room that was farther away, a storage area for luggage that the bellmen also used for breaks. Walking to that room felt like “a marathon,” Callahan told the jury, but at least there was usually a chair available. Garlow initially agreed but later backtracked, Callahan testified, seeming to agree with an HR official who said that the concierge — by then a Marriott employee for more than a quarter-century — shouldn’t be trusted with guests’ belongings.
Callahan rebelled, continuing to use the room, and the dispute caused a string of tense meetings with Garlow and HR.
Other necessities started to disappear. The large padded mat at the concierge desk was thrown out, forcing Callahan to stand painfully on hard tile for months, despite complaints to Garlow, jurors heard. When some smaller mats finally arrived, Callahan lacked the core strength to wheel his chair across them, and the chair itself often sat at an angle. Callahan ended up standing more, and had to ice his feet at home afterward, he testified.
When Callahan complained to Garlow that the mats’ edges were curling — yet another hazard — the manager forcibly shoved the concierge onto a mat and laughed, Callahan told the court. “The mats are not that terrible,” Garlow told his disabled employee, according to Callahan.
There were other humiliations. A coworker laughed mockingly at Callahan when the concierge nearly lost his balance; Garlow was standing nearby and said nothing, Callahan testified. On a separate occasion, Garlow and an HR employee speculated aloud, within earshot of Callahan, about the concierge’s ability to urinate and have bowel movements, according to Callahan.
By Thanksgiving 2017, Callahan was so stressed that he spent most of the holiday in bed, unable to sleep and struggling to breathe easily. A few days later he went to the emergency room and was admitted to hospital.
“I learned that I was in the first stages of heart failure,” he testified.
Callahan took a leave of absence, but things were no better when he returned. Within a few months, the hotel began renovations — and the concierge station was temporarily moved up a floor, far from the room Callahan had previously used for lunch.
A break room on the temporary floor was very difficult to reach, Callahan testified, but Garlow’s only suggestion was to use the staff cafeteria three floors away. Callahan emailed both HR and hotel management multiple times, according to court documents, to no avail.
Even after it was finished, the renovation was a disaster for Callahan. A new concierge desk was so wide that he couldn’t reach across it, he testified — and it didn’t offer enough leg space for him to sit properly. The new chair, meanwhile, angled him forward, putting more weight on his weakened legs.
“Working at that workstation was like torture,” Callahan said at trial. “My coworker at one point said to me, ‘My back is really jacked up from this desk. I can’t imagine what’s happening to yours.'”
Callahan complained repeatedly to Garlow and emailed HR to ask about his needs; in response, he told jurors, HR replied that “no special accommodations” had been made for the disabled concierge — either at the desk or anywhere else in the hotel.
In September 2019, Callahan’s doctor told him he had to quit. The concierge’s work situation was aggravating his heart condition, the doctor later testified.
Reluctantly, Callahan complied. “I loved this job,” he said at trial. “The only time I felt like I wasn’t disabled was when I was working with guests.”
In its verdict, the jury found that at least one Marriott executive was “guilty of malice, fraud, or oppression” in the hotel’s illegal treatment of Callahan. Jurors awarded the concierge $5 million for his pain and suffering, past and future — and added a further $15 million to punish Marriott.
Callahan’s heart condition had worsened in the meantime, leading to surgery and an implanted device. Shortly before the trial, he told jurors, his doctors had informed him that he needed “another heart.”
He was just about to get on a transplant list, he testified.
» Read Callahan’s complaint
» Read an excerpt of Callahan’s trial testimony
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Callahan v. Marriott Marquis Hotel. 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.
Daniel Callahan was represented by the Law Offices of Susan Rubenstein; the deRubertis Law Firm; and the Law Offices of Patrice L. Goldman.
These Bad Bosses Passed Over a Star Employee in Favor of “Young and Perky”
Kelly O’Kell was in her mid-fifties when her new boss, Clinton Wertz, stood in her office and told her he’d never hire a woman her age, according to court testimony.
Along with his deputy, Clyde Lay, Wertz pushed managers to favor “young and new” people at the Ephrata, Wash. field office of the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to a complaint filed later by O’Kell — a pattern of favoritism that was confirmed by the judge in the case.
When O’Kell applied for a promotion for which she’d been told she was the only viable in-house contender, Wertz passed her over in favor of an outsider who had never worked for the federal government. Wertz’s purported reason, as O’Kell testified she heard via a colleague: The other candidate — a slender, blonde woman under 40 — was “young and perky.”
Wertz and Lay brushed off O’Kell when she asked about the decision, she testified, so she contacted an Equal Employment Opportunity counselor. As soon as her bosses heard about her EEO complaint they began to treat her differently, the judge found: They disciplined O’Kell for how she was expressing her frustration, he said, even as her substantive complaints “fell into a black hole.”
“Clint and Clyde are coming after you,” O’Kell’s direct manager warned her as he meted out punishment that came from above, she testified.
O’Kell’s pushback was framed as creating a hostile work environment, and ultimately she was fired for rudeness, among other offenses. She hasn’t found comparable work since.
Clinton Wertz and Clyde Lay are our Bad Bosses of the Month.
O’Kell filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department, claiming age discrimination and retaliation. A federal judge ruled in her favor after an 11-day bench trial, awarding her almost $1.7 million in damages and ordering the agency to remove all tainted discipline records from O’Kell’s personnel file.
An appeals court later told the judge to adjust his damages calculations; a revised judgment remains pending at this writing.
Government was O’Kell’s second career. Originally a trusts lawyer, she was self-employed before a series of accidents made it impossible to find her own health insurance, she told the judge. In 2008, she took a job with the Interior Department in Wyoming, moved to Oregon in 2011, and arrived in Ephrata in 2014. She worked there as a realty specialist, handling the federal government’s land sales, land purchases, and land access requests.
In 2015, Clinton Wertz was named as the Ephrata office’s field manager — and the atmosphere changed, O’Kell testified. Asked soon afterward by her direct manager, Anthony Ortiz, to help him vet a list of potential hires, she heard about a new directive.
“Tony told us … that Clint told him repeatedly we’re only to hire the young and new,” she testified. “One [person on the list], Tony told me … ‘She’s probably your age,’ so he scratched her off.”
Among the new hires chosen: A younger woman named Sarah Maciel who, when she started work at the Ephrata field office, repeatedly called O’Kell “grandma” despite being asked to stop, O’Kell testified.
Not long after Maciel’s arrival, according to O’Kell, Wertz came into to a room where both women worked and, holding forth, said he’d never hire a woman over 50 “because they can’t carry the workload like a man.” O’Kell was 56 at the time.
Just a few months later, Wertz would select Maciel — who was two grades below O’Kell on the government scale — for an interview panel that helped to evaluate her senior colleague for a promotion, a decision the judge drily called “unusual.”
Maciel’s participation wasn’t the only odd aspect of O’Kell’s promotion denial. Wertz had recently brought aboard Clyde Lay, with whom he’d previously worked, as his deputy. The two men consulted on hiring decisions, according to one witness, and “it always worked out … that the people they were hiring were the young girls, young ladies.”
Nonetheless, both Lay and Wertz told O’Kell that she was “the only person in the office” who was qualified for the new position, according to O’Kell’s complaint. So when O’Kell appeared before the interview panel, she testified, she was shocked that Wertz acted with obvious disinterest.
“He was kicked back in his chair with his foot up on his knee, and he was texting and laughing,” she told the judge. “He occasionally put his phone down when he asked me a question, but then, as soon as he was done with his note, he would pick his phone back up. And he really maybe looked at me twice through the whole interview, maybe three or four times. Not often. It was so minimal. It was so uncomfortable.”
Instead of O’Kell, Wertz chose to hire the other person who interviewed, a slim younger woman with no federal experience. Wertz told Lay to break the news via phone to O’Kell, who was at a training session in Idaho. At first she took the disappointment in stride, but then she went out to dinner at a Red Robin with a group of colleagues including Sarah Maciel — her junior, who had sat on her interview panel — and “asked her if there was anything I could have done different.”
According to O’Kell, Maciel was blunt about Wertz’s rationale: “All things being equal, the other candidate was young and perky and going to bring new energy to the office.”
“I went out behind the restaurant behind a dumpster because I wasn’t going to let them see me cry,” O’Kell told the judge. “And I cried behind the dumpster, and I stayed out there through their whole dinner. I went back in … and my dinner was sitting there, and I couldn’t eat. Sarah started talking about [how] the longer I worked there, the more I’ll understand management.”
Ironically, O’Kell would later receive a “STAR award” that honored her as “an example of knowledge, quality, and extra effort.” Wertz had signed it on May 19, 2016, the very same day O’Kell learned of her non-selection, the court heard.
The following week, O’Kell confronted Wertz and Lay separately but got nowhere. In court, Lay acknowledged that he’d understood O’Kell to be complaining about Wertz’s overt age bias — and that he responded by trying to end the discussion, saying that “I cannot imagine that Clint would ever say anything like that ever.”
“Clint wasn’t hiring all the young women,” Lay explained further to O’Kell, he testified: A female official was doing some of the hiring, too. Lay never reported the discussion to EEO officials, he told the judge, nor to anyone in human resources, nor even to Wertz. Instead, he “handed it off” to O’Kell’s direct manager, Lay’s subordinate, a man whom O’Kell testified was easily intimidated.
O’Kell contacted the agency’s EEO counselor herself. Her complaint was one of dozens made by Ephrata workers during this approximate period, the judge found — including several claims of age bias that were bolstered by quotes such as “we need young blood” and “older workers don’t go with the flow.”
Ephrata leaders learned within hours that O’Kell had filed a complaint, the judge said, and “immediately began to treat her differently.”
O’Kell’s direct boss, Ortiz, suspended her telework privileges and then issued her a letter of reprimand a few weeks later, supposedly for engaging in inappropriate conduct toward Maciel — an accusation that the judge said had credibility issues, and an outcome he found to be retaliatory.
Yet O’Kell gradually realized, she said in court, that Ortiz was just the messenger. “Please, this is not coming from me,” he’d say after returning from meetings with Wertz and Lay, she testified. “Don’t be mad at me.”
After she made a formal complaint of retaliation, Ortiz warned her that she was now firmly on Lay’s “hit list,” according to her complaint.
Long months of tension followed. The judge described this period as “an almost endless dispute.” O’Kell was investigated for supposed infractions, often for the tone of her responses to managers and co-workers, even as she brought more claims and her original complaint languished. Her manager Ortiz — whom she had come to see as a protector — died in an accident, and, even as grief counselors visited the office, she testified, Lay spoke ominously to her in the hallway.
“Now I finally got you where I want you,” she testified that he said.
To escape the Ephrata office, O’Kell applied for other jobs — but the reprimand in her file made it difficult. She asked Lay to remove it, but Lay testified that he replied that he’d do so only if she presented him with her signed acceptance of another job. The agency’s EEO specialist later said that Lay’s condition was “unacceptable” and evidence of retaliation, according to court documents.
A bit later that year, Lay issued O’Kell with a proposed three-day suspension — which was upheld by another manager — and gave O’Kell her first-ever poor performance rating.
In his letter proposing her suspension, Lay said he was disciplining O’Kell for “the continued inappropriate manner in which you choose to voice your [discrimination and retaliation] concerns. I am not prohibiting you from raising concerns. However, there are appropriate processes and forums to do so.”
The judge saw things differently, blaming the government itself for “abdicating [its] responsibilities” toward an employee in anguish. O’Kell’s “behavioral issues at work may have been born[] out of [her department’s] inaction” on her complaints, he found; her managers might have worked with their former star to “figure out and address the root cause of her behavior changes.”
O’Kell did use all the prescribed processes, the judge observed, but she got back nothing but frustration as her complaint went “uninvestigated and uncompleted.” He found her suspension to be rooted in retaliation.
Wertz’s role in the suspension is unclear, meanwhile, and he was about to leave the Ephrata office anyhow: According to Lay’s testimony, higher-ups felt that Wertz “wasn’t doing a good job.”
O’Kell was eventually fired in 2018, about two years after her original promotion denial. By that time the Interior Department still hadn’t issued any findings from its investigation of her first claim of discrimination, way back in 2016 — and it still hadn’t done so by the time the judge issued his findings in 2022.
By contrast, O’Kell’s firing was the result of a whirlwind investigation that started with Lay escorting her out of an employee luncheon to meet with a private investigator. It ended just two months later with a notice of proposed removal that cited multiple instances of O’Kell’s rudeness, unresponsiveness, lack of respect, and other “inappropriate conduct.”
But without the earlier retaliatory discipline, the judge found, O’Kell “would not have been terminated.” And the speedy investigation showed that the Interior Department was “fully capable” of completing an internal probe — it just “chose” not to do so for O’Kell’s allegations.
O’Kell filed her lawsuit about a month after her firing. A single mother of adult children, she had just made the final payment on a daughter’s student loan. She never had a chance, she testified, to start saving for her own retirement.
While waiting for the trial, O’Kell applied for about 100 jobs, she testified. She got just two offers — one of which was rescinded based on the government’s documentation of her termination. The other required a commute that she couldn’t handle for medical reasons.
By the time of the trial, which was delayed for COVID and other reasons, she was still unemployed. Lay, meanwhile, remained at the Ephrata field office.
» Read O’Kell’s complaint
» Read the judge’s findings
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in O’Kell v. Haaland. 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.
Kelly O’Kell was represented by Riverside NW Law Group.
