Park poker leads to lawsuit

By JAMIE PAGE

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Workers claim they were harassed for reporting illegal poker game

A group of Chickasaw State Park employees, who were informants nearly a year ago for a police gambling bust of seven men on Chickasaw grounds, are suing the state and several park employees for employment retaliation.

Of the seven men fined last February for gambling in a poker game in a Chickasaw cabin, two were Chickasaw employees - former park manager Guy Garner and park ranger Donald Earl Holmes.

Since then, park employees Doris Siler, Roy Burkeens, Gaylon Rowland and Kathy Maness say they have been retaliated against in the workplace for giving police the information needed to raid the poker game.

On Friday, the four filed a lawsuit against Garner; Holmes; the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation; the department's regional manager, Randy Smalley; George Larry ''Buddy'' Smith, a Chickasaw supervisor; Mike Carlton, director of park operations; and Mary Simpson Tims, a Chickasaw park ranger, according to the complaint filed in Chester County Circuit Court.

None of the named defendants could be reached for comment. However, speaking on behalf of TDEC, spokesman David Owenby had not seen the lawsuit when contacted Tuesday. Owenby reserved comment until reading the suit.

''But I will say this. We take issues of workplace harassment very seriously,'' Owenby said. ''Anytime there is an issue of that kind, we respond in a timely fashion and work to investigate the charges and claims that are brought by the involved participants.''

Maness, a plaintiff in the suit, now works at Pinson Mounds State Park. Former Chickasaw park manager Garner, a defendant, was transferred in October to Pickwick Landing State Park, said Jerry Adams, the current Chickasaw park manager, who was transferred from Pickwick.

''His (Garner's) transfer is not related to any potential retaliation, but it is related to the card game incident last year,'' Owenby said. ''It was management's assessment of that episode that led them to make a transfer decision.''

The plaintiffs are suing based on a state statute that prohibits retaliation against state employees for reporting or attempting to report violations of state law.

Early last year, Burkeens and Siler signed an affidavit alleging that Garner and Holmes were engaged in unlawful activities at Chickasaw. All four plaintiffs later gave statements to police verifying the charges were true.

They were questioned separately and in the presence of an investigator and TDEC regional manager Smalley, who promised that the information would remain confidential and specifically not be disclosed to those identified in their statements, the complaint says. However, Smalley relayed the information to other park employees, including Garner and Holmes, according to the suit.

''Since cooperating in the investigation, all of the defendants of this complaint have subjected plaintiffs to a continuous pattern of retaliation in many forms on numerous occasions,'' the plaintiffs' attorney, Michael Weinman, claims in the suit.

Here's how the complaint describes the workplace retaliatory actions:

• Garner reassigned Burkeens to operating the weed eater ''in clear violation of his doctor's orders, which states that he is not to lift more than five pounds because a steel pin has been surgically implanted in his hand.''
  
• Garner reassigned Maness to ''less desirable and more demeaning jobs.'' While completing one of her new job duties, cleaning a park bath house, Maness pulled back a shower curtain to find ''a large amount of human fecal matter lying in the shower stall.'' After cleaning up the fecal matter, Maness was ridiculed by Buddy Smith and several other park employees who were pointing, making obscene gestures and laughing and shouting at her. Such retaliatory conduct eventually became ''so severe she was granted administrative leave due to the emotional distress.''
  
• Rowland, a Chickasaw employee of more than 20 years, is nearly 70 years old. He was transferred from his position as a mechanic to garbage detail, ''which is a great deal more strenuous than his previous position.''
  
• Siler, a 30-year park employee, has been repeatedly denied promotions since the investigation, while employees of less experience have received promotions she requested. Siler has also been ''the target of several inappropriate sexual comments, intimidation, and other forms of inappropriate and unprofessional behavior by defendant Garner and other defendants.''
  

  The plaintiffs are claiming monetary loss, mental anguish, public humiliation, severe emotional distress, and being forced to retain legal counsel to defend and prosecute their rights, according to the suit. They seek up to three times the amount of actual damages plus costs. They seek any compensatory or punitive damages they are entitled under state law, and are also asking the court to grant an injunction prohibiting the defendants from further retaliating against them.
  

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- Jamie Page, (731) 425-9643