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 Bonded with a Sales Star Over Mani-Pedis — But Was It All a Veneer?
At first, Jennifer Harris’ boss at FedEx Corporate Services seemed an ally: The two women swapped tales of their families, hung out at team dinners, and even hit the salon together for manicures and pedicures.
But then Michelle Lamb, the new director of FedEx’s “Longhorn” region in southern Texas, suggested that Ms. Harris — a driven sales manager who had broken college records as a relay sprinter — should consider taking a voluntary demotion because she wasn’t an adequate leader, according to a lawsuit.
As a top performer who had recently helped her boss to win a sales award, Ms. Harris felt “blindsided” by Ms. Lamb, she testified at trial. The only notable difference between her and her peers, as far as she could see, was her skin color: She was the only Black sales manager on the team. Ms. Lamb is white.
Ms. Harris declined to step down and instead asked FedEx to investigate possible bias. Not long after, she started getting discipline from Ms. Lamb — the first-ever demerits of her career, according to testimony.
After raising more concerns, this time about possible retaliation, Ms. Harris was put on a performance improvement plan (PIP) that required her to outperform some white peers who weren’t on PIPs themselves.
Finally, a month after Ms. Harris filed a third internal complaint, her former manicure buddy fired her.
Michelle Lamb is our latest Bad Boss of the Month.
Ms. Harris filed suit against FedEx in federal court, claiming race discrimination and retaliation. In October 2022, after a week-long trial, a jury in Houston found FedEx liable for retaliation and awarded her a whopping $366 million — an amount that may have been the largest-ever such award. FedEx appealed the outcome in February 2023.
By the time Ms. Harris was fired, she had been working for FedEx’s corporate sales organization for more than 12 years. According to testimony at trial, her early days at the company in Irving, Tex., in her second real job out of college, were life-changing.
Both of her parents were educators, Ms. Harris said, so she didn’t have much experience in the corporate world. Two mentors at FedEx took her in hand, teaching her how to remake her image so that she could advance more easily — dressing more sedately, toning down her “rather loud” persona.
“These two ladies saw potential in me, and had the courage to pull me to the side,” she told jurors. “They helped me identify that if I wanted to be able to grow with the company, I have to actually present myself as such — even the simplest things, [like] getting a watch, pearls … Just kind of restructuring.”
Before long Ms. Harris was thriving. At trial, a former co-worker called her “an immensely hard worker” who was so dedicated to FedEx — and even to its favored causes, such as Habitat for Humanity — that she “bled purple,” the shipping giant’s signature color.
Over her tenure, according to testimony, Ms. Harris was promoted six times and was named twice to the President’s Club, an honor reserved for stellar performers who then get to mingle with top execs on a luxury trip. Many FedEx salespeople go their entire careers without even one such award, jurors heard.
Along the way, Ms. Harris was selected for a FedEx leadership program and became a manager. In mid-2017, she was chosen to lead a $60 million district based in Houston, just as Ms. Lamb was tapped to head the parent region. Both women worked in the same building, on the same floor — and Ms. Harris believed she found had a new mentor and role model.
“I was excited to [be] able to learn from someone who was recently promoted into the director role, which I aspired to be,” she told jurors.
The early days were good; this was when they went for manicures together. Ms. Harris’ team initially exceeded their goals, along with several other teams, and helped Ms. Lamb to earn a coveted President’s Club honor.
In fiscal 2019, however, performance was rough across the entire company. Under pressure, the women’s relationship started to fray. Ms. Harris asked for weekly coaching meetings, hoping to tap into her boss’s experience, but was frustrated by a lack of concrete advice, she testified.
Then, in March 2019, came Ms. Lamb’s unexpected suggestion that Ms. Harris should think about dropping her management role, purportedly because of failings as a team coach — and also because her “passion for engaging with customers” might make her happier in a low-ranking role. All of a sudden, Ms. Harris testified, she reevaluated their past interactions and saw patterns she didn’t like, especially in comparison to Ms. Lamb’s treatment of white managers.
Ms. Harris testified, for instance, that Ms. Lamb had previously accused her of not participating in company incentive programs as other managers did — but cited data from before Ms. Harris was even in her position. Ms. Lamb also set unfair hurdles for Ms. Harris’ group by removing a big customer from the district without adjusting sales goals, she said.
Besides, Ms. Harris told jurors, her subordinates gave her high scores as a manager and coach in FedEx’s official surveys. “Statistics demonstrated that I was good at that job,” she testified.
“You’re supposed to be developed by your leader,” Ms. Harris said in court. “That was my goal [in] asking for additional one-on-ones. What I didn’t want is to be harassed in those meetings … There was never any leadership on Michelle Lamb’s part. It was always a beat-down. … All of those things where it’s clear that data demonstrates I am not the lowest, but … she’s belittling me, comparing me to my white peers.”
At trial, Ms. Lamb denied that she had ever treated Ms. Harris differently based on her race.
“It’s disgusting to be referred to as a racist,” she told jurors. “I am not a racist, nor do I associate with people who are.”
FedEx investigated Ms. Harris’ claims of discrimination and didn’t take any action against Ms. Lamb. Likewise at trial, the jury didn’t find enough evidence to prove discrimination.
What happened next, however, would ultimately lead to the nine-figure verdict.
Shortly after the discrimination investigation closed, and barely a year after Ms. Harris’ second President’s Award, Ms. Lamb hit her with a letter of counseling for “unacceptable performance” and a PIP, according to testimony.
Ms. Harris and her team weren’t meeting some goals, according to documents shown in court, but they also were performing better than some other teams under Ms. Lamb — and anyhow, high performers often lagged after an exceptional year, jurors heard.
Asked to explain at trial why Ms. Harris was singled out when several white peers had similar or worse team records, Ms. Lamb cited “leadership deficiencies.” Among the examples she discussed: When excluded by Ms. Lamb from a FedEx training program to “cut costs,” Ms. Harris had paid her own way to attend the session on a vacation day.
“Why aren’t you praising her for that?” asked Ms. Harris’ attorney. Ms. Lamb replied that she was “disappointed that [Ms. Harris] didn’t follow instructions.”
“You have to be capable of leading a team,” she testified, “and you have to be capable of being led. … Jennifer just lacked that ability.”
There were other disputes: Whether Ms. Lamb had reduced the revenue available to Ms. Harris by removing a member from her team; whether Ms. Lamb had shunted a big potential customer away from Ms. Harris. Amid this discord, the former sales star filed another internal complaint, alleging that Ms. Lamb was punishing her for the original discrimination claim.
Just days after the second FedEx probe ended — again to no effect — Ms. Lamb issued a letter of warning to Ms. Harris and put her on another PIP, according to testimony. The new plan required Ms. Harris to deliver a performance equal to the average of her peers, which meant outperforming some district managers who weren’t on PIPs themselves.
The conflict took a toll on Ms. Harris. According to testimony, the former athlete gained weight, developed anxiety, and had trouble sleeping due to “continuous dry heaving” that required medication and a procedure to address a developing hernia.
She filed a final internal complaint in December 2019 and was fired by Ms. Lamb the following month, ending an almost-13-year career at FedEx. Based on documents shown in court, her performance had exceeded several of her peers through much of the contested period.
“I never thought I would ever not work for FedEx,” Ms. Harris told the jury, describing her trauma upon leaving. Even today, she testified, she needs to look away whenever she sees a FedEx truck.
At trial, Ms. Harris’ pastor described her as “emotionally destroyed” by the firing. He saw her break down in tears several times, he said, and described holding her as she sobbed publicly at a birthday celebration in a restaurant.
“I am still worried about her mental state,” he testified.
A unanimous jury found that FedEx retaliated against Ms. Harris because of her claims of discrimination, and that the company didn’t treat her internal complaints in good faith. They awarded her more than $1 million for past and future emotional damage — and because they found FedEx’s behavior in the case to be “reprehensible,” they added a huge $365 million in punitive damages.
The number may have been inspired by Ms. Harris’ attorney, who suggested during his closing argument that punitive damages should send a message based on the overall value of FedEx Corporate Services: The jury awarded Ms. Harris about half the worth of the FedEx unit.
Ms. Lamb still works for FedEx, meanwhile, having been moved into a new position with “a larger [revenue] responsibility” than when she managed Ms. Harris, she testified.
» Read Ms. Harris’ second amended complaint
» Watch a news segment of Ms. Harris speaking with WFAA-TV
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Harris v. FedEx Corporate Services, Inc. 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.
Ms. Harris was represented by The Sanford Firm in Dallas.
Irked by a Cop’s Dyslexia, This Bad Boss Turned a Minor Traffic Stop into a Firing Offense
Dyslexia and ADHD didn’t stop Timothy Patrick “Pat” Green from working as a police officer for the City of South Pasadena. It was his dream job — and he did it happily for about 25 years.
Working first as a reserve officer and then full-time, Mr. Green became a well-loved figure in the community; fellow officers dubbed him “Father Pat” for his outreach to homeless and at-risk people.
One captain didn’t share the warm feelings, however. According to testimony in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Green, Richard Kowaltschuk was infuriated by his subordinate’s disabilities, to the point of expressing “disgust” at written reports that contained words garbled by the officer’s dyslexia.
The captain even rejected reports that sympathetic co-workers had helped Mr. Green to write, one colleague said at trial. “It was just never good enough,” the officer told jurors, noting that he had warned Mr. Green that Mr. Kowaltschuk was “coming after you.”
The blowup came after Mr. Green pulled over a driver early one morning. The event itself was relatively minor, but Mr. Kowaltschuk latched onto inconsistencies in the report, accusing his subordinate of lying — and twice re-staged the event to bolster his theory, according to court documents.
“This is our opportunity to get Pat Green,” the captain told an investigating officer, according to testimony. Although the investigator ended up recommending no action, Mr. Kowaltschuk wrote a memo urging Mr. Green’s firing — and before long “Father Pat” was out.
Richard Kowaltschuk is our latest Bad Boss of the Month.
Mr. Green filed a lawsuit against South Pasadena, claiming disability discrimination and other violations of California law. A Los Angeles jury sided with Mr. Green, awarding him damages of almost $4.8 million, an amount that was later reduced to about $1.7 million by the trial judge. Mr. Green’s victory withstood an appeal; last year he was paid more than $3.6 million, an amount that included his substantial legal costs.
Mr. Green had wanted to be a cop ever since watching Adam-12 as a kid. After failing third grade he was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, attending a special education program for years, yet his zeal for law enforcement never flagged: He signed up to be a Police Explorer at 14. An ethos of public service was “instilled from my parents,” he explained at trial. His father was a World War II pilot; several of his siblings have served their communities, including in the police.
Mr. Green disclosed his disabilities on his police academy application, he testified, and they were widely known and accepted at work. As a cop he visited schools to talk with kids who had dyslexia and ADHD, to show them that their dreams were still possible.
Former police chief Joseph Payne acknowledged in court documents that Mr. Green’s reports and investigations were affected by his disabilities — but he noted that co-workers often helped out their friend, and that Mr. Green’s community-relations skills were “probably better than just about anybody else in the department.”
At trial, one supervisor called Mr. Green “an excellent officer.” Positive evaluations were entered into evidence: In one internal memo, a captain wrote that Mr. Green “is much too valuable an employee to let [poor] report writing stand in his way.”
Mr. Kowaltschuk disagreed, however, and peppered Mr. Green with negative feedback and nuisance investigations, according to testimony. In conversations, the captain was “often angry and a bit of a martinet,” a witness told jurors, while Mr. Green was “always very proper and courteous and restrained.”
The traffic incident happened in January 2012. During an overnight shift, Mr. Green pulled over a driver for minor speeding — but then got sidetracked by nearby suspicious activity, he testified, allowing the original offender to leave. Although Mr. Green didn’t know it at the time, the driver had been drinking and minutes earlier had left the scene of a fender bender, according to testimony.
The driver later turned himself in; he wasn’t prosecuted for any of his early-morning actions, according to court documents. Still, Mr. Kowaltschuk launched an internal probe based on discrepancies between the driver’s account and that of Mr. Green. Among the questions: Why didn’t Mr. Green realize the driver had been drinking — or ask about the car’s newly damaged front end?
Mr. Green explained that he had spoken to the driver only briefly while standing near the back of the car, but Mr. Kowaltschuk said that simply wasn’t credible, according to documents. When the investigating sergeant declined to recommend any discipline, Mr. Kowaltschuk asked him to alter the findings to include an allegation of dishonesty. The sergeant refused, testifying that he believed Mr. Kowaltschuk was “going after Pat because of his disabilities, like he’s been out for him for years.”
Undeterred, Mr. Kowaltschuk commandeered the matter and sent a memo to then-Chief Payne — who had been supportive of Mr. Green’s career — recommending that the dyslexic officer be fired for lying and negligence, according to court records. The captain’s recommendation was based partly on his own recreations of the incident, which an expert described in court as improper and flawed.
The chief didn’t take Mr. Kowaltschuk’s advice, but he agreed that Mr. Green hadn’t been diligent enough. The officer’s ultimate punishment: A six-day suspension, to be stayed if Mr. Green completed training to help mitigate the effect of his learning disabilities.
Except then, just a few weeks later, Chief Payne retired.
On his very first day as acting chief, newcomer Arthur Miller reviewed Mr. Green’s file — including Mr. Kowaltschuk’s arguments about dishonesty. Based on that record, Acting Chief Miller concluded that Mr. Green had made statements “with intent to deceive.” The stayed suspension, he said, was “too lenient,” according to documents in the case.
After some back-and-forth, Mr. Green was terminated in August 2013 — and his life quickly cratered.
He tried to find another job in law enforcement but “nobody would touch me for getting fired for lying,” he testified; he ended up overseeing maintenance for several Mexican restaurants owned by a family he has known since childhood. He took medication for depression and sleeplessness, but found the side effects intolerable. Eventually he found that exercise helped to stave off his despair.
According to a doctor who spoke at trial, Mr. Green has suffered from the symptoms of major depressive disorder — and, even more deeply, the loss of identity that came from being fired for dishonesty.
“He really viewed himself as a good cop,” the doctor testified, but now “he can’t ever be a police officer, which is something that he was really proud of and fought for. … [T]hat’s not going to go away.”
For his suffering, past and future, the jury awarded Mr. Green $4 million. South Pasadena argued the amount was excessive and the trial judge agreed, giving Mr. Green a choice of a new trial or a $3.1 million reduction in his non-economic damages. He took the slashed damages. South Pasadena and Mr. Green both appealed the outcome, but an appellate court affirmed the final judgment.
Last year Mr. Green asked the city to reclassify his firing as an honorable retirement, and to grant him a retired police badge.
So far the city has declined.
» Read Mr. Green’s original complaint in the case
» Read a local newspaper’s interview with Mr. Green
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Green v. City of South Pasadena. 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.
Mr. Green was represented by The Law Offices of Vincent Miller.
Running a Nashville Studio with His Famous Wife, This Bad Boss Hit a Series of Wrong Notes
Country music star Martina McBride and her husband John founded Blackbird Studio, a recording facility in Nashville, Tenn., in 2002. Along with Ms. McBride herself, Blackbird’s high-profile clients have ranged from Adele to the Zac Brown Band.
In 2012 Mr. McBride hired Richard Hanson as Blackbird’s operations manager, a job that grew to include oversight of assistant engineers and unpaid interns. According to documents filed in a subsequent lawsuit, Mr. Hanson quickly became concerned that some studio staff weren’t being paid properly for overtime hours — and that interns weren’t getting any educational benefit from menial chores set by Mr. McBride, who ran the facility.
Among other duties, according to court documents, interns had to clean toilets, pick up groceries and lottery tickets for the McBride family, and buy a endless stream of phone chargers for Mr. McBride, who kept breaking them. Both McBrides would publicly “yell at, scold and chastise” interns when a chore wasn’t done to their liking, according to Mr. Hanson’s complaint.
Plus there was the time an intern was asked to prowl around the McBrides’ home with a gun, the lawsuit said.
On several occasions Mr. Hanson informed Mr. McBride that Blackbird might be violating federal labor laws, according to testimony. Things came to a head, Mr. Hanson told the court, when an intern was unfairly blamed for failing to deliver lunch to Ms. McBride at her home. Frustrated, Mr. Hanson contacted the U.S. Department of Labor to see if Blackbird’s practices were legal.
Upon learning of Mr. Hanson’s inquiry, Mr. McBride fired him on the spot. “I’m f***ing done with you,” a court order quotes him as saying. “Get your s*** and get the f*** out of my studio.”
John McBride is our latest Bad Boss of the Month.
Mr. Hanson filed a complaint against the McBrides and Blackbird, claiming illegal retaliation for his good-faith concerns about labor practices. Ms. McBride, the singer, was dismissed as an individual defendant — but early in 2020 a federal jury found her husband and Blackbird liable for about $160,000 in damages.
This month the trial judge awarded Mr. Hanson a further $200,000 to cover attorney fees and interest. Because Mr. McBride fired his employee for an improper reason, the judge wrote in her order, he had himself to blame for “numerous sensitive and embarrassing facts [being] brought to light in a public forum.”
Though his background was in sound engineering, Rich Hanson had never really fit into the Blackbird scene. He was popular with clients and won praise for “his technical abilities and being able to make things happen the way they were supposed to,” the studio’s manager testified, but he also wore people out — including Mr. McBride, the owner — with incessant critiques.
“There were many times where I asked him to calm down, or to chill, or to take a deep breath,” Mr. Hanson’s superior Rolff Zwiep said in a deposition, “and he didn’t even hear me. He would just talk over me.”
Mr. Hanson was especially focused on overtime issues and the treatment of Blackbird’s unpaid interns, who complained in court filings that they were regarded, in essence, as cleaners and personal servants to the McBrides.
One recent college graduate, for instance, wrote that he never received “any sort of training/advice on music recording” during his Blackbird internship, “which was the entire reason I was there in the first place.” Instead, he wrote, he was asked to dust, do food runs, and to pack up equipment and clean toilets after late-night sessions.
Another intern wrote that, in addition to scrubbing toilets, he would mop, vacuum, and do dishes in a shift that ran from 6:00pm to 6:00am. A graduate of audio engineering school, he often ended up taking orders from the McBrides’ young daughters, who would call Blackbird requesting candy — which the intern said he had to buy and deliver to the family home.
“Learning was not a large part of my internship,” he wrote, “but … I can clean your toilet so well you could eat off of it.” When this intern sought employment in Nashville afterward, he said, he was “laughed off the phone” and told that Blackbird “only produces talented cleaners.” Four years later he was waiting tables.
The gun incident happened one night when both McBrides were out of town, according to testimony and court documents, and a sitter was minding two McBride daughters. Believing there was an intruder, one of the daughters had called Mr. McBride — who, rather than contacting police, called Blackbird at 1:30am and asked for an intern to check it out.
(In a deposition, Mr. McBride acknowledged the request and said he frequently asked Blackbird staff to check the security of his home, involving interns “probably three or four times.”)
Two interns and an assistant engineer arrived at the house, where the worried sitter declined to call the police, asked the Blackbird people to secure the house, and gave them a loaded gun, according to court documents. As the only person familiar with firearms, one of the interns took the weapon and led a search of the property. There was no sign of an intruder, but the sitter remained uneasy and took the McBride girls elsewhere to sleep, according to a witness’ summary.
The intern later wrote to Mr. Hanson that he knew he’d sometimes have to “perform some less than desirable tasks” — but that risking personal harm “went so far beyond what I signed up for,” according to an e-mail filed with the court.
Mr. Hanson’s breaking point came in June 2017, the day Ms. McBride didn’t get her lunch fast enough.
An intern had been told to pick up food from The Tavern, a local eatery, and deliver it to the country singer at home. When the star didn’t have her food an hour later, Mr. Hanson recalled in a deposition, her husband became “very angry … and he demanded that [a second intern] go back to the restaurant and pick up another order.”
Mr. Hanson knew the food had been delivered: The first intern already had reported back to Blackbird with the receipt, he testified. It turned out that Ava, the McBrides’ youngest daughter, had accepted the food but forgotten to tell her mom.
In his deposition, Mr. McBride conceded that his daughter “may have had something to do with it,” but still faulted Mr. Hanson for being wound so tight. “A negative attitude is not a good thing to have in a recording studio,” Mr. McBride testified. “It’s a creative environment where … the vibe is very important.”
Steamed at “the accumulation of all the things … over my course of employment,” Mr. Hanson logged onto the Department of Labor’s Web site and filled out a form to report that his employer was “using unpaid interns in a manner that wasn’t appropriate, and also was not paying certain staff members overtime that they were due,” he said in a deposition.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Hanson told Mr. Zwiep what he had done — and Mr. Zwiep promptly informed Mr. McBride. According to court documents, Mr. McBride called Mr. Hanson and lit into him: “I hear you have a f***ing problem and you’re going to call the Better Business Bureau [sic] or some f***ing s***.”
When Mr. Hanson corrected him, saying he had already contacted the Department of Labor, Mr. McBride fired him.
In a deposition, Mr. McBride testified that “the straw that broke the camel’s back was the lunchtime fiasco” — but claimed he didn’t fire Mr. Hanson because of the DOL report. In fact, he said, he already had made plans to fire Mr. Hanson and was waiting only for his intended replacement to return from a European honeymoon.
Mr. Hanson’s firing didn’t stop the DOL investigation that he had triggered, which ultimately found ten separate overtime violations at Blackbird. Mr. McBride agreed to pay staff members more than $40,000 in back wages and damages.
The Blackbird internship program, however, didn’t draw any sanction. Although the interns were unpaid, the DOL said, they got some experience and received educational credit as agreed. The youngsters were “the primary beneficiaries of the relationship,” the investigator concluded.
» Read Mr. Hanson’s complaint in the case
» Read e-mails from interns describing their experience at Blackbird (some information redacted)
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Hanson v. McBride. 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.
Mr. Hanson was represented by Morgan & Morgan, P.A..
