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| Department of Corrections paying dearly on group of personnel claims |
| By billingsgazette.com - MIKE DENNISON |
| Published: 02/14/2012 |
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HELENA — If a former Department of Corrections attorney wins her request that the state pay her legal costs for a human rights claim against the agency, it won't be the only cost the department has paid for several personnel complaints from within its old legal unit. In the past three years, the agency has paid $332,000 in legal fees, settlements and judgments stemming from a series of discrimination claims and lawsuits involving four people. Next week, former DOC attorney Valerie Wilson will argue in state District Court that she should be paid $85,000 for legal costs she says she incurred while successfully pursuing her human rights claim against the agency in 2009. Wilson primarily represented herself in the case but also hired another lawyer and paralegal to assist her. She won a $37,500 judgment against the agency last August, when a state hearings officer ruled that the DOC illegally retaliated against her for supporting another employee who had filed a discrimination complaint. In court filings in December, Wilson noted that the department has paid, in addition to her judgment, $294,500 in legal costs and other payments for the related discrimination claims since March 2009. She said the payments are "instructive in evaluating the costs and fees requested" in her case. The state's lawyers, in a response filed two weeks ago, said paying Wilson attorney fees for representing herself would be creating an "impermissible windfall," since she already won a judgment. The state also said Wilson was a "significant part of the problem" that gave rise to the discrimination complaints and "was not an innocent victim just trying to get along in a dysfunctional office environment." The state said Wilson's case stems from a "severe breakdown in working relationships in the Department of Corrections' Legal Unit" in early 2009, beginning with paralegal Kelly Johnson's complaint that she was paid unfairly because she was a woman. Read More. |
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