Hollingshead & Dudley Trial Lawyers

$750,000

Employment Discrimination

City of St. Louis jury awards lifelong St. Louisan Beverly Brennan-daughter of legendary St. Louis Cardinals’ broadcaster Jack Buck and sister of legendary nationwide sportscaster Jack Buck-$750,000 in emotional distress damages against Harris-Stowe State University for creating a decades-long hostile work-environment based on gender. Ms. Brennan was both Harris-Stowe’s Director of Speech & Theater and a faculty member in the university’s theater department for over 20 years. The jury heard extensive testimony from, not just Ms. Brennan, but her former female colleagues that the university’s male dominated leadership hired, promoted, and retained male employees over better qualified female employees. After a nearly six-day trial, the jury returned a $750,000 verdict in Ms. Brennan’s favor with the trial court subsequently awarding Ms. Brennan an additional $1,212,426.46 in attorneys’ fees and court costs-for a total verdict of $1,962,426.64.

$641,547

Police Misconduct / Civil Rights

Young woman in school to become a police officer is a passenger in a vehicle driven by her husband coming home from a St. Louis Cardinal’s playoff game when they encountered an unlawful St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department “checkpoint.” Despite having committed no crime (not even a traffic violation), the young woman and her husband are drug out of their vehicles by multiple metropolitan police officers at gunpoint. After getting drug out of their vehicle without legal justification, a metro police officer conducts a vaginal body cavity search of the young woman in a dirty semi-truck parking lot in full view of other male police officers, plants cocaine on the young woman, and then proceeds to delete the young woman’s sexual assault complaint from the police department’s computer system. At trial, the officer unbelievably testifies that she conducted the vaginal body cavity search in order to ensure that the young woman had not “hidden a knife or gun in her vagina.” Following a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri...

$502,496

Wrongful Termination / Employee Discrimination

A bi-racial head of security for a historically black, public Missouri university is discriminated against and wrongfully terminated because she “isn’t black enough.” The woman uproots her family from Virginia to take the security job in Missouri, and on the university’s word about the woman’s early job performance, she signs a long-term apartment lease close to the school. However, after only 88 days on the job, the university claims that the woman “hasn’t gotten enough done” and terminates her employment effective immediately. The decision to fire the woman is largely based upon the recommendation of the university’s then HR Director who had previously (and subsequently) been convicted of both state and federal embezzlement charges. Following a jury trial in the Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis...

$422,866

Revenge Porn Statute

A single mother of three children catches her former boyfriend cheating on her, and as a result, breaks things off with the man. The ex-boyfriend threatens that, if the mother does not “get back together with him,” he will send nude pictures of the mother to her children, including distributing flyers depicting the pictures at her younger son’s middle school and her church; and post the pictures on her employer’s publicly accessible social media pages. After the mother refuses to reconcile with the cheating ex-boyfriend, and despite being informed by the Blue Springs Police Department that, if he follows through with his threats, his behavior would constitute a felony under Missouri law, nonetheless, the ex-boyfriend sends the pictures via Facebook Messenger, along with vile descriptions of the mother to both of her adult children and posts the pictures on the publicly accessible Facebook page for the mother’s place of employment. The ex-boyfriend also leaves the mother voicemails saying things like, “you f***** with the wrong guy.” After quitting her job and leaving her church due to the embarrassment of the ex-boyfriend’s sociopathic behavior, the ex-boyfriend is charged with, and ultimately, pleads guilty to the felony of non-consensually distributing nude photographs of the mother to a third-party. Unfortunately, he receives a “slap on the wrist” by the criminal court-only being sentenced to probation. Seeking real justice, the brave mother of three puts her reputation on the line and brings a lawsuit against the ex-boyfriend in the Jackson County Circuit Court seeking money damages under a relatively new Missouri law prohibiting exactly this type of deplorable behavior. In what Hollingshead & Dudley believes to be the first civil jury trial under this new law...

$376,724

Wrongful Termination / Employee Discrimination

A highly praised housekeeper at a major St. Louis area hospital with over 15-years on the job suffers from chronic arthritis. For over 14-years, the woman occasional takes, intermittent FMLA leave to attend doctor’s appointments for her arthritis, and on each such occasion, she is permitted to return to work cleaning physician’s medical offices with no restrictions and no questions asked by the hospital. As the woman approaches her 15th year anniversary with the hospital, she returns from what she believes to be another routine, approved FMLA leave only to discover that the hospital is now demanding that she take a “fitness for duty” test which, at least according to the jury, is far beyond any physical requirements ever demanded of a hospital housekeeper. After she “fails” the hospital’s impossible “fitness for duty” test, the hospital proceeds to demand the woman comply with a maze of complicated, and often contradictory, reasonable accommodation policies that, even for an employment discrimination attorney, are impossible to decipher. When the woman allegedly fails to return one of the seemingly endless number of forms to the hospital’s HR department, and after 15-years of devoted service as a hospital housekeeper, she is fired without any compensation. Following a jury trial in the St. Louis County Circuit Court...

$147,500

Civil Rights / Jail Misconduct

Young man being held at a Kansas City area jail on drug charges is sexually assaulted by a violent sexual predator as a direct result of the historically troubled jail’s long-standing overcrowding problems which prevented non-violent inmates from being housed separately from sexually violent felons.