COURTESY PHOTO
Ron Spivey (left) with his attorneys, Julianne Germinder and Tony Relys.
A jury in St. Louis city awarded $6.1 million to a former guidance counselor at Soldan High School who alleged age and gender discrimination.
In his original suit, Ron Spivey, 64, says that at the time he worked at the north city school he was the only male counselor and that his younger supervisor, as well as the school system more broadly, “favored the younger female counselors at Soldan and mistreated [Spivey] as compared to those co-workers.”
Specifically, Spivey’s suit said, his supervisor “demeaned, belittled and yelled at” him. She also “slapped her hands together at him and slammed her hands on the table while screaming at him.”
He also alleged in his filing that he was denied a transfer to another school when he sought to leave what he called a hostile work environment.
Spivey alleged it was because of his gender and his age that he was placed on a performance improvement plan before getting fired and replaced with a younger, female counselor.
He was fired in May 2017 and filed suit one year later.
After a two-week trial, a jury reached a decision to award Spivey $5.2 million in punitive damages against the school system in addition to another roughly $900,000 in damages for discrimination and retaliation.
The court proceedings leading up the judgment were not without its quirks.
About a week into the trial, lawyers for St. Louis Public Schools filed a motion for the judge to declare a mistrial.
In their filing, the school’s attorneys wrote that during jury selection one potential juror said that he had attended Soldan when Spivey was a counselor there. He was asked if he knew Spivey, at which point he “appeared to search his memory, then responded to the effect of, ‘the name sounds familiar,’ but unambiguously denied having more than a passing memory of” the former counselor.
This individual was eventually seated on the jury.
However, when the trial was underway, former Soldan principal Thomas Cason came into the courtroom as a witness. According to court filings, Cason immediately recognized the Soldan alum in the jury box and, more importantly, recognized him as a student who had spent “a substantial amount of time” in Spivey’s office and “seemed to have a close personal relationship” with him.
Upon investigation, the attorneys for the school wrote, they learned that Spivey was the counselor for the juror’s brother as well.
Despite the filing for a mistrial, the proceedings continued for another week and a half. The jury reached their decision on Tuesday of this week.
No appeal has been filed in the suit as of Friday.
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