Louisiana Voice

A trial date of next Feb. 22 has been set for a wrongful termination case in which an employee of nearly 30 years was fired by the Louisiana Workers Compensation Corp. (LWCC) for offenses the majority of state civil service workers and supervisors alike have violated on a regular basis.

A federal judge earlier denied a motion for summary judgment (dismissal) filed by the LWCC after two obscure, little-used regulations were invoked as a means to fire the longtime employee.

Judge John W. deGravelles denied LWCC’s motion in a 25-page ruling, saying LWCC’s citing violation of the regulations “was not the real reason” for the termination of Laura Sherman, who had worked for the agency since 1993, “but rather a discriminatory animus was.”

Sherman was found employing a state computer to perform duties related to rental property she owned and was found to be in violation of regulations prohibiting private use of state computers and of failing to properly notify and obtain approval for outside employment.

Those rules are, at best, selectively enforced throughout state government as state employees routinely use computers for personal emails and for online shopping (including supervisors this writer is personally aware of, including one who booked a cruise on a state computer while on the clock).

Moreover, many state employees derive income from outside sources that would not be considered “employment,” per se, such as rental property, selling beauty products and even performing school fundraising activities without ever giving written notification or seeking permission to do so.

In Sherman’s case, she maintains the work she was doing on her rental property was being done during her lunch hour and that she was not on the clock at the time.

LWCC vice presidents Angela McGhee, Kyle Rickards and Jamie Bourg attest that they conducted an investigation and determined that Sherman was actively working on her rental properties without permission to engage in outside work, as required by LWCC’s Outside Employment Policy.

There is, indeed, such a policy throughout state government but it is rarely enforced. Employees routinely derive outside income from investments such as rental property, for which supervisors would be hard-pressed to qualify as “outside employment,” since many supervisors themselves own rental property and receive income from outside sources.

The only time the regulation is enforced is when there is no other reason to terminate an employee. Employees who sell beauty and health products, for example, often do so while actually on duty in offices where they work.

The incident in question occurred on June 8, 2022. Both sides in the dispute offered evidence pertaining to the two policies. LWCC submitted in evidence language of the Outside Employment and Unethical Behavior Policies as well as testimony about their meaning.

Conversely, Sherman submitted a number of declarations from former employees of LWCC that touched on how those policies were generally understood, applied and enforced in practice, whether they applied to investment property, whether LWCC had knowledge of her activities with the investment property, what employees were allowed to do during break (such as lunch breaks) and whether any other employee had ever been terminated for violating either policy.

“In resolving the motion (for summary judgment), the court may not undertake to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses, weigh the evidence or resolve factual disputes,” deGravelles wrote. “So long as the evidence in the record is such that a reasonable jury drawing all inferences in favor of the nonmoving party (Sherman) could arrive at a verdict in that party’s favor, the court must deny the motion.”

The five-day trial has been set for Feb. 22-26, 2027.

Sherman is represented by Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith III.