A jury has awarded a former clerk in the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk’s Office $225,000 in damages in a lawsuit that claimed she was forced out of her job as political retribution.
A four-woman, four-man jury unanimously found in favor of Jeanette McKee, who worked for more than 27 years in the office before she left six months after Circuit Clerk Mike
Reuter took office in January 2015.
Reuter, a Republican, defeated McKee, a Democrat, in the 2014 general election.
On June 20, after a four-day trial before Eastern District U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Perry, the jury awarded McKee $25,000 in actual damages and $200,000 in punitive damages. She also will be compensated for $4,404 in legal fees.
McKee also is seeking to recover up to $126,307 in additional attorney’s fees.
Court records don’t indicate who has to pay the award, but Reuter said he believes that because he was sued in his official capacity, the state would pay any money.
A spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office did not provide information about whether the state will cover the cost before the Leader deadline.
Reuter said the McKee case is being appealed.
“It’s not over yet,” he said. “There’s not much I can say about that at this time because it’s being appealed.”
In a separate case, Rochelle Mayes, another former Jefferson County Circuit Clerk employee, settled a lawsuit alleging civil rights violations against Reuter and employees in his office after she was fired.
Mayes, who is African-American, had worked for the office for 17 years before she was fired in October 2017.
The amount of the settlement and other terms of the settlement are confidential, said her attorney, David Duree.
“We can say that the case has been settled and that she is satisfied with the settlement,” Duree said.
As far as the Mayes case, Reuter said, “she was really suing the state of Missouri. I really had nothing to do with that case. I also would assume the state is paying whatever the settlement amount was.”
John Taylor, who handled the defense in both cases for the Attorney General’s Office, did not return a phone call seeking a comment.
McKee’s case
McKee was the unit manager, or second-in-command, to longtime Circuit Clerk Howard Wagner, who decided to retire after the November 2014 election. McKee filed as a Democrat to succeed him but lost to Reuter in that election.
According to court documents,
Reuter met her as she arrived for work on his first day and told her she was “stripped of her duties” and assigned her to a cubicle immediately outside his office “so he could keep an eye on her.”
Three days later, according to the lawsuit, Reuter told her he was installing two surveillance cameras in the office – one in his office and the other in a hallway that was pointed to “reveal the identity of anyone approaching McKee as she sat in her cubicle.”
The camera and other actions Reuter took against her had a chilling effect on her fellow employees, she alleged in the lawsuit.
“Many of the other deputy clerks stopped making eye contact with McKee. None would acknowledge her, or express any positive action toward her, while potentially in view of the cameras,” according to the allegations.
A doctor put McKee on medical leave and she sought counseling, and then she returned to work, the court documents say.
In April, Reuter told McKee he was firing her. She appealed, and a three-judge panel in Farmington ruled in favor of McKee and ruled she should be reinstated with back pay.
In June, she resigned to take a job as a case manager with the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis. She said she continues to work there, adding that her current supervisor provided information in her case that said she was a good employee.
“McKee was constructively discharged because her working conditions were made so onerous, abusive and unpleasant that a reasonable person in her position would have felt compelled to resign,” and Reuter discriminated against her “on the basis of her political affiliation and because she ran against him,” the lawsuit alleged.
In his answer to the suit, Reuter denied McKee’s allegations and said she should not be entitled to punitive damages because she cannot prove his actions were done “with evil motive or reckless indifference,” according to court records.
Reuter’s lawyers said in court documents that McKee “had difficulties working under the new administration” and Reuter fired her for disruptive behavior.
His attorneys also countered that because McKee immediately took a new, higher-paying job, she suffered no damages.
Two co-plaintiffs in the case – former Circuit Clerk employees Susan Hickman and Sharon Rebecca Hickman – made claims similar to McKee’s, but the jury did not rule in their favor, and they received no award.
In addition, the jury did not find that other co-defendants in the case were liable, including other Circuit Clerk employees and Reuter’s wife, County Councilman Renee Reuter.
In an interview, McKee said the result of the trial was bittersweet.
“My feeling is really sad because someone like him can come into office and do what he did. He’s clearly incompetent. I’m glad the jury was able to see through him saying one thing one time and then another time saying something else. I’m just glad the jury saw the truth.”
Mayes’ case
Court documents indicate that Mayes was the first African-American to work as a deputy in the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk’s Office in the county’s history, and she identified as a Democrat who supported McKee in the 2014 election.
According to the court documents, Mayes had been serving as courtroom clerk for Circuit Judge Darrell Missey, a Republican, but when he became the circuit’s presiding judge, she was assigned to Circuit Judge Katherine Hardy Senkel’s courtroom instead of moving up with Missey. Serving as the presiding judge’s clerk and secretary would have resulted in a $200 a month raise for Mayes.
She later was reassinged to be a clerk in the Juvenile Division and was demoted with a pay cut, according to court documents.
Mayes was passed over several times for reinstatement as a courtroom clerk, the suit alleged, and “she was treated as a pariah.”
The lawsuit said there were clashes between Missey’s courtroom clerk, Katrina Lingenfelter, and Mayes that led to Reuter firing her in October 2017.
In her lawsuit, Mayes alleged she was discriminated against because of her political affiliation, but those counts were dismissed by Judge Catherine Perry, leaving Mayes’ allegation that her treatment and firing were violations of the Missouri Human Rights Act because of her race.
Reuter and other co-defendants denied the allegations in Mayes’ lawsuit, according to court documents.
A jury trial was scheduled for July, but the two sides agreed on the settlement in March.