By Thomas Franz
BridgeTower Media Newswires
DETROIT-A Genesee County Circuit Court jury on Sept. 9 awarded nearly $11.4 million to a married couple who claimed they were targets of racial harassment and retaliation at their jobs with the Michigan Department of Corrections.
The case of Lisa Griffey and Cedric Griffey v. Michigan Department of Corrections began when Lisa Griffey filed the original suit and alleged that she was racially harassed on a daily basis and was not wanted in her office.
When that suit was filed and word spread around the MDOC, plaintiffs' attorney Jonathan R. Marko of Marko Law in Detroit said Cedric Griffey then became the target of retaliation charges and he eventually lost his job as a deputy warden.
"The MDOC did what's called stacking charges," Marko said. "Even if there was only one action they said was bad, they would put five violations on it."
Marko reported that the trial lasted six weeks and included 41 witnesses who were called to the stand to testify. The jury deliberated for more than 10 hours.
Case strategy
Marko said that throughout trial, his main aim was to boil down the claims to the "bones of the matter."
"We just had to keep fighting the ever-changing defense in this case. There were thousands of pages of documents, which makes it overbearing and difficult," Marko said. "I think trying to simplify a very complex case as much as we could was a key to success."
On Cedric Griffey's portion of the case, Marko said what actually happened didn't match with what the MDOC had claimed.
"When you look at what he actually did, it was crazy, and it didn't meet what they were saying," Marko said.
Marko reported that Cedric Griffey was alleged to have lied in an investigation unrelated to himself, he didn't properly write up a prisoner for discipline, and he didn't properly write up one of his workers who tried to bring an energy drink into the prison, something which that worker did often.
"Those are the three things they said he did wrong. We argued he didn't do anything wrong and even if he did, the punishment didn't fit the crime," Marko said.
On the energy drink charge, Marko said Cedric Griffey wasn't at the prison the day of the incident, and the prison vending machine sells energy drinks to purchase.
"The idea of smuggling contraband into a prison is a pretty powerful idea of doing something wrong, but that's not what this was about," Marko said. "Everyone testified that you can always take things back to your car also."
For key pieces of testimony, Marko said a crucial part to the case occurred when one of the state's witnesses testified that after Lisa Griffey filed her civil rights complaint, the Lansing administrators sent a copy of Lisa's civil rights lawsuit to Cedric's boss.
"What possible purpose would sending the lawsuit to Cedric's boss serve?" Marko asked. "Cedric's boss said he locked it in his desk, and when he retired, he made a point to give the key to this lawsuit to the incoming boss. That fit into the theme of this being retaliation."
Marko said evidence of collusion during an investigation was also key.
"Their claim that this was all fair and not unusual was contradicted by video evidence that showed they lied and this was collusion at the highest level," Marko said.
On the defense's claims, Marko said he was able to show that some of the state's witnesses were not telling the truth and frequently changed their testimony.
"They would completely flip their testimony to something different," Marko said. "The jury told them that if they admitted to making a couple of mistakes and would tell the truth, it would've been a different story."
The jury awarded to Cedric Griffey $1.85 million for past emotional distress, $2.5 million for future emotional distress and $1.9 million for future economic damages. It awarded to Lisa Griffey $25,000 for past economic damages, $857,189 for future economic damages, $2.75 million for past emotional distress and $1.5 million for future emotional distress.
Marko said he asked for a total of $22.5 million.
"It was a compromise verdict. The jury adopted my economist numbers almost verbatim. There was no economic analysis by the state, they just tried to impeach my economic expert," Marko said.
Marko added that the jury asked if they could put stipulations on the verdict to have the investigators and MDOC officials involved with the case work as a regular corrections officer one month per year.
"The jurors said they felt the state was out of touch with the common worker," Marko said.
MDOC counsel Bryan Beach did not respond to requests for comment on this case.
Published: Wed, Oct 23, 2019
