Firm wants new trial or $760,000 award set aside in Cape County age discrimination case

Jim Trickey was devastated. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. He felt like a failure. The 65-year-old former Kaman Industrial Technologies Corp. branch manager of the year didn't understand how he'd lost the job he loved and was good at.

At 65, he was one of the oldest employees in the company, and he'd been told they needed "new blood."

According to court records, he was undermined by his co-workers at Kaman's branch office in Cape Girardeau, given performance reviews containing false information and demoted. After he complained to Kaman's human resources department that he was being discriminated against due to his age and filed a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, he was suspended without pay and asked to resign and accept a severance offer.

In August, after three and a half years of litigation and a trial at the Rush H. Limbaugh Sr. U.S. Courthouse, a jury returned a $760,000 verdict in Trickey's favor. On Thursday, Kaman filed a motion for a new trial or that the damages be reduced or taken away.

Cape Girardeau lawyer J.P. Clubb, who specializes in employment law, said the amount was large for an employment discrimination case anywhere in Missouri, let alone Southeast Missouri. For example, a plaintiff in a Scott County sexual harassment case Clubb and his wife tried last year was awarded $125,000.

Large verdicts are thought to be less common among rural juries, said Trickey's attorney, Jerry Dobson of St. Louis. The jurors in Trickey's trial were from Malden, Van Buren, Poplar Bluff, Ellsinore, East Prairie and Senath.

"That demonstrates juries in anywhere in Missouri when they see discrimination and injustice in the employment context will not hesitate to award damages that sufficiently compensate the plaintiff and they'll punish a defendant who they think ought to be punished. That is the real message conveyed by this verdict." Dobson said.

Last year, Dobson tried a sexual harassment case involving a woman who worked as a Missouri corrections officer in Lincoln County, where the jury returned a unanimous verdict of $1 million in punitive damages against the state.

"It was that one that made me say, 'All this stuff about rural juries, I'm not sure they're so bad,'" Dobson said.

The jury was sympathetic to the fact that the Kaman branch Trickey managed, which is now in Jackson, had performed at an extraordinary level in the three years before his discharge, Dobson said. In December 2007, when the Cape Girardeau Kaman branch was ranked fifth out of 166 branches, he was placed on a 90-day Performance Improvement Plan. He was demoted before day 60 after telling the company's vice president of human resources he was being discriminated against because of his age, Dobson said.

"It seemed they jumped the gun, especially when his company even moved up to No. 4 in sales in January of 2008," Dobson said. "They had, by their own accounts, an extraordinary month."

On Trickey's claim of age discrimination, the jury awarded $160,000 in actual damages. On his claim they retaliated against him after filing a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, the jury awarded $100,000 in actual damages and $500,000 in punitive damages.

"Verdicts that size should be a warning to employers that they are more likely to be held accountable for discrimination, which hopefully will make them less likely to engage in discrimination," Clubb said.

"I hope others will see this verdict and understand that the little guy won one," Trickey said. "I also hope it inspires hope in those people that are finding themselves in similar situations. I realize it seems like David and Goliath, but remember how that story ended."

Clubb has an age discrimination case pending against another Jackson business, Buchheit.

He represents Catherine Stevens, 62, of Marble Hill, Mo., who according to court documents filed in October 2010 was allegedly paid less and eventually fired from her job as a kitchen and bath specialist at Buchheit in Jackson due to her age. Pretrial litigation continues in Stevens' case against Buchheit; if it isn't settled out of court, it will likely be tried sometime next year, Clubb said.

Before someone can sue an employer for age, or any other form of discrimination they must first file a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination in housing, employment and public places. In fiscal year 2010, 2,109 cases were filed, with 84 percent of those for employment discrimination. Among the employment discrimination cases, 20 percent were for age discrimination and 32 percent were for retaliation. The commission issued 530 right-to-sue letters in employment discrimination cases last year.

The majority of employment-related disputes are resolved before trial and are settled confidentially, Clubb said. In cases that do go to trial, jury verdicts for actual damages can vary widely depending on the wage the employee was earning at the time. Both state and federal law allow plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases who receive jury verdicts in their favor to recover attorney fees from the defendants.

Senate Bill 188, passed this year by the Missouri Legislature, would have placed caps on the amounts of damages victims in employment discrimination cases can receive and prohibit victims from suing the individuals who engaged in discriminatory practices. It also would have prevented punitive damages from being awarded against the state or its political subdivisions. The bill, which applied only to Missouri's courts, was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon, who said in a news release in April that the bill undermined key provisions of the Missouri Human Rights Act and rolled back decades of progress in protecting civil rights.

Trickey's case was originally filed in state court, but Kaman filed to have the case removed to federal court, which had jurisdiction because the company is based outside Missouri, Dobson said.

mmiller@semissourian.com

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