Cost of discrimination lawsuits adds up for Kansas City

Nearly three years ago, the Kansas City municipal prosecutor’s office replaced its part-time assistant prosecutors with full-time positions to provide a more effective operation that might even save money long term.

But at least in the short term, that move has resulted in an expensive legal headache.

Eight of the part-time assistant city prosecutors who were replaced with full-timers sued the city for age, race and/or gender discrimination. Since January, the City Council has agreed to settle four of those cases at a cost of more than $1 million — with four more lawsuits pending.

The assistant city prosecutor settlements are part of the $1.65 million that the City Council has agreed to pay out since last July to settle discrimination or retaliation complaints against the city.

Those payouts come at a time when the city has been scrambling to find money for basic services such as property code enforcement and neighborhood Legal Aid services. City Councilman Ed Ford, a private practice lawyer, couldn’t hide his frustration at a recent budget discussion.

“One of the biggest expenses we seem to have year in and year out are lawsuits for discrimination, retaliation, and it just seems to me that we could do a better job on the front end,” he said. “It’s just costing us too much money.”

Mayor Sly James, who had a long career as a private practice lawyer, said in an interview that the City Council was not involved in the municipal prosecutor reorganization and he didn’t know if it was a good decision or not.

But he understood the frustration over the settlement payments.

“Yes, that’s more codes officers you can’t hire. I agree wholeheartedly,” he said. “If we didn’t have to have a huge legal fund, we could divert some of that money to other stuff.”

Former city prosecutor Lowell Gard, who oversaw the 2011 prosecutors office reorganization and retired at the end of last year, staunchly defended the change and said it has worked out well, despite the lawsuits that resulted.

Gard said that in 2011, the municipal court was switching to a fully computerized, paperless system that required prosecutors to be much more actively involved in the court’s case management and preparation. Switching from 16 part-timers to eight full-timers made a lot of sense, he said.

He said the city hired the best people and got a team that has done an excellent job.

“It was necessary to bring the city’s prosecution effort into the 21st century,” he said.

Gard also argued that over time it should be less expensive to have eight full-timers than 16 part-timers.

City Manager Troy Schulte agreed the reorganization was justified and has been worth it, although he said saving money wasn’t the motive. He said he had not anticipated the resulting lawsuits and wasn’t sure how the city could have avoided them.

But more broadly, Schulte said the city is taking specific steps to try to minimize future discrimination complaints with better training and more consistency in promotions, terminations and disciplinary actions.

The eight former assistant city prosecutors who sued — seven women and one man — were all let go in mid-2011. They filed their lawsuits individually and alleged different circumstances, but the cases were consolidated before Jackson County Circuit Judge Robert Schieber, and trial dates were set for this year.

The attorneys who sued each had worked part time for years or even decades for the city prosecutor’s office. They all applied for the new full-time jobs but were not selected. They alleged the city had hired younger, less experienced candidates.

In January, the City Council agreed to settle with plaintiff Margaret Costanzo for $500,000 and with Frankie Navratil for $300,000.

On Thursday, the City Council agreed to settle with plaintiff Dayna Terrell for $150,000 and Tania Van Dyk for $90,000.

The city’s fact sheets explaining the settlements said six women and two men were chosen for the prosecutor’s office. The two men were both older than the women plaintiffs, but the females hired were mostly younger, some significantly so.

The Law Department recommended settling the cases “because the city could be found to have considered (the plaintiffs’) age as a factor in its hiring decision based on the ages of the women selected, which would be a violation of the Missouri Human Rights Act.”

City Attorney Bill Geary, who had no role in the city prosecutor reorganization, said in an interview that settling cases doesn’t mean the city admits it was wrong.

“Part of settling cases is risk management,” Geary said. “We’re settling when we can settle because I think it’s in the city’s best interest to do that.”

Four more cases, with plaintiffs Sam Buccero, Cynthia Holmes, Abby Mueller and Debra Snoke-Adams, are set for trial later this year, and Geary declined to comment on those.

Most of the plaintiffs’ attorneys did not return phone calls for comment or declined to comment because all claims haven’t been resolved. But Lynne Bratcher, attorney for Terrell and Van Dyk, said the reorganization could have been handled better.

She said both her clients were highly qualified and well liked in the prosecutor’s office, and the city didn’t have good objective criteria to justify why other people were hired rather than her clients.

Since July, the city has settled several other discrimination complaints, including:

• Shonda Marshall, an African-American woman who has worked 23 years for the water department. She filed a lawsuit in 2012 alleging she was repeatedly passed over for promotions that went to less qualified white males. The City Council voted Thursday to settle her claim for $282,500.

• Peter Jolly, an African-American male and longtime parks department employee. He sued in 2012, alleging he had been working as an “acting area superintendent” for six months in 2010 and 2011 but was passed over for the permanent job by a younger, white male, whom he then had to train. The City Council voted in July to settle his claim for $100,000.

• Wallace Hoverder, now 87, who had worked for the parks department since 1953. He filed a lawsuit in 2013 alleging that at his 2012 employee appraisal, he was subjected to offensive comments about his age and told he needed to retire. The City Council agreed earlier this month to settle his claim for $65,000.

To be sure, Kansas City municipal government is not the only government to get hit with discrimination complaints.

Chuck Thompson, executive director of the international municipal lawyers association, said that it’s common for large cities to face these types of lawsuits, especially in tough economic times.

Schulte acknowledged the challenge of eliminating all discrimination-type complaints from a diverse, complex organization with 4,000 employees.

“We’ve got some engrained bad habits, and we’ve got to root them out,” he said.

This story was originally published March 28, 2014 at 10:48 PM with the headline "Cost of discrimination lawsuits adds up for Kansas City."