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CITY SETTLES WITH LAMBERT IN RACE DISCRIMINATION CASE
By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 10:10 AM CST
Pine Bluff aldermen voted 5-2 Monday to settle a race discrimination lawsuit for $100,000 and reinstate the job of Jerry Lambert, a former city police officer who is also a former chief of police for the town of Altheimer.
The city will be responsible for $50,000 of that amount, which will be paid out of savings accumulated from the 2007 budget, said Mayor Carl A. Redus Jr.
The Arkansas Municipal League, an association of cities and the city’s legal representation in the case, will pay the other half of the settlement, Redus said.
Redus said the city settled based on the Municipal League’s advice.
“We were following the recommendation of our legal advisors,” he said.
Lambert filed his lawsuit in August 2006, a year after he was fired by the city of Pine Bluff for allegedly turning evidence in late, according to court documents. In his complaints filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Lambert said he was fired in retaliation for filing a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against former Deputy Chief Tony Terral.
Terral resigned in 2006 after Lambert’s employment was terminated.
Lambert, who was first hired by the city’s police department in 2002 and left in 2003 to take a job as Altheimer’s police chief, said he was rated then as an exceptional employee by the city of Pine Bluff. The discrimination occurred after he was rehired as a city police officer in September 2004, according to his complaints.
“The plaintiff was subject to disparate treatment on account of his race ... in that similarly situated white officers committed more serious and even criminal offenses but were not subject to termination and was (sic) afforded the progressive step discipline policy, whereas the plaintiff was not,” the complaint said.
It is unclear whether Lambert was on probation, as all new hires are, at the time of his firing. In one version of a complaint filed with the court, Lambert said the probationary period was waived by former Police Chief Daniel Moses and the Civil Service Commission six months before he was terminated. The city, in its answer to the complaint, denied that was the case.
Lambert had requested a jury trial and back pay, damages and reinstatement. In addition to filing the lawsuit against the city, he had also filed it individually against Redus, Moses and Terral.
The city’s settlement with Lambert was tentatively reached Nov. 26 at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge H. David Young.
The city’s aldermen and the mayor made their vote Monday with no public discussion.
In hurried individual conferences before the City Council meeting, aldermen polled each other on the way each was feeling regarding the issue and who would make the motion, in apparent violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act which prohibits elected officials from polling each other before meeting publicly to take official action.
After the meeting, 3rd Ward Alderman Derwood Smith said he voted against the settlement because he was tired of the city always settling its lawsuits.
“He was fired for good cause, and I don’t think he deserved anything,” Smith said. “I don’t know how many cases I’ve been to (but) we have not tried a case yet. I just hate it. They always settle. ... It gets to be comical, to see the way the city’s money goes.”
Alderman Bill Brumett also voted against the settlement.
A man reached on a home telephone number listed as Lambert’s in court documents declined to be interviewed Monday.
“I have no comments, ‘mam,” he said. “All of my comments are referred to my attorney.”
Fourth Ward Alderman Janice L. Roberts left the Council Chambers before the vote was taken and did not return until after it — and two other votes taken by the council — were cast.
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