Full Western District splits on specificity of employee’s claims

In a 7-4 ruling, the full Missouri Court of Appeals Western District affirmed a $790,000 verdict for a former Kansas City maintenance worker who sued the city for retaliation and a hostile work environment. 

The court’s split primarily concerned whether Ronald E. Williams’ claims at trial had been adequately described in the complaint he made to the Missouri Human Rights Commission. The court’s majority held that Kansas City failed to preserve its argument — and that even if it had, a liberal reading of Williams’ claims showed that he’d told the city everything it needed to know.

“Simply put,” Judge Mark D. Pfeiffer wrote for the majority, the city’s argument “is nothing more than a conclusory statement of bare legal assertions that both ignores express language contained within the actionable charges of discrimination and fails to plead specific facts required to support its affirmative defense.”

But in a dissent, Judge Alok Ahuja wrote that “even under the most wildly expansive reading” of Williams initial complaint, the claims brought at trial weren’t those for which he’d been authorized to sue.

“The allegedly discriminatory and retaliatory acts which Williams was permitted to submit to the jury, as part of his hostile work environment and retaliation claims, went light years beyond anything he had challenged in his administrative complaint,” Ahuja wrote.

David Lunceford of the Lunceford Law Firm in Lee’s Summit, an attorney for Williams who has brought several other claims of discrimination on behalf of Kansas City employees, said he was glad that the majority recognized that lenient readings of initial claims are necessary.

“Whose filing these charges? It’s the average, common person, most of whom don’t have lawyers,” he said. “It seems preposterous that we would hold the average person to some sort of high standard that they have to know everything before they file a complaint.”

However, Lunceford said that, given the split in the Western District, the issue might wind up in the Missouri Supreme Court. 

Chris Hernandez, a city spokesman, said the city is studying the ruling and will determine its options soon. 

“While an appeal would likely involve legal issues regarding the exhaustion of administrative remedies, it’s important to note that the City of Kansas City strongly values diversity and expects all employees to treat others with respect,” he said in a statement. He added that the city requires training on diversity, harassment and discrimination issues for employees every two-to-three years and additional training for managers and supervisors.

Williams, who is Black, worked for the city’s Water Services Department from 2011 until he quit in 2017. He had filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission in 2014 claiming he’d been reprimanded for signing a statement supporting a former co-employee’s complaint of racial discrimination. The commission declined to issue a right-to-sue letter, as the incident occurred more than 180 days before the complaint was filed. 

The following year, Williams filed another complaint alleging that the city had allowed only his white co-workers to take a training course. He wrote that he believed he was facing discrimination because of race, as well as “retaliation against me for opposing acts made unlawful” under federal civil rights law. The commission issued a right-to-sue letter based on the complaint.

Williams’ case went to trial in Jackson County Circuit Court in 2020, resulting in $286,000 in compensatory damages and $504,000 in punitive damages on claims of retaliation and hostile work environment, though the city prevailed on a claim of race discrimination. After trial, the judge awarded about $475,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs, bringing the total recovery to $1.26 million. 

The city repeatedly argued that Williams had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies by not including explicit claims of retaliation and a hostile work environment. But the majority said the last sentence of his 2015 complaint, which referred to retaliation for “opposing” unlawful conduct, clearly incorporated the issues he raised in his 2014 complaint.

“At bare minimum, if read ‘liberally,’ as we are required to do, it simply cannot be said that Williams was not placing the City on notice that he believed the City’s earlier discriminatory misconduct — when combined with the numerous training schemes designed by the City to keep Williams and his fellow black employees from ascending to a higher stature of employment — was part of a deliberate attempt to create a pervasive racially discriminatory and offensive work environment that would force Williams to leave (i.e., a hostile work environment),” Pfeiffer wrote.

Judges Gary D. Witt, Anthony Rex Gabbert, Edward R. Ardini Jr., W. Douglas Thomson, Joseph M. Ellis and Thomas H. Newton concurred. Ellis and Newton are retired members of the court who sat as senior judges. 

Ahuja’s dissent, however, said Williams’ complaint “alleged that he and other African-Americans had been wrongfully denied access to a specific training course — nothing more.” He said the court should send the case back for a new trial “on the single allegedly retaliatory act which Williams actually challenged before the Commission.”

Ahuja, joined by Chief Judge Cynthia L. Martin and Judges Karen King Mitchell and Thomas N. Chapman, also took issue with the majority’s holding that the city failed to preserve its argument. He wrote that the city raised the issue at “every conceivable opportunity.” The 79-page combined opinion includes a four-page transcript of one such argument. 

“Given the City’s detailed arguments, I do not know what standard of specificity the majority intends to apply; but I would respectfully suggest that it would be impossible for defense counsel — in the midst of trial — to ever satisfy it,” Ahuja wrote.

The case is Williams v. City of Kansas City, WD83835.