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
“[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’ 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.