Ex-EMS Chief in Tennessee at Center of Federal Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

April 08—Four years before he was ousted as Monroe County sheriff, Randy White fired an alleged sexual harassment victim in his post as emergency services director and hired her alleged attacker.

The question for jurors in U.S. District Court this week is White's motive in the 2010 termination of paramedic Wanda Ann Lawson and whether Monroe County taxpayers should be on the financial hook for his actions.

Lawson, 64, is suing White and her former employer, Monroe County Emergency Medical Services, for wrongful termination. On Monday, an eight-member civil jury was tapped to decide the case, which is being tried before U.S. District Judge Pamela Reeves.

White ran for sheriff in 2014, won against incumbent Sheriff Bill Bivens by 700 votes and then was promptly ousted by a special judge who ruled he wasn't qualified to hold the office. He is appealing. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in January confirmed a probe of allegations of vote-buying by White and his supporters.

Before that controversy, White wound up in the center of another when Monroe County Mayor Tim Yates won election in 2010, removed EMS Director Brad Smith and replaced him with White.

Both sides in the lawsuit agree White fired Lawson after taking the job and then hired Joe Hall, with whom he had worked before. Neither side disputes Hall had been fired from the same job White gave him just a year earlier after he allegedly grabbed Lawson's breast and made sexual remarks to her in August 2009.

Lawson's attorney, Adam Wilson, told jurors Monday in opening statements White granted Lawson a cursory interview as he decided who to keep on staff and who to let go and then fired her, writing the decision was the result of a "reorganization." Wilson said White trumped up a reason—claims of rudeness and assault on a patient—for the termination only after she filed suit.

"Mr. White and Mr. Hall were friends," Wilson said.

Attorney Jonathan Taylor, who represents Monroe County, contended White barely knew Hall and hired him 26 days after Lawson was fired simply because "there was an opening." Taylor cited a call of complaint about Lawson from the owner of East Tennessee Health Care, one of the largest private health care facilities in the county, as the reason White fired her.

Lawson testified Smith already had deemed the complaint without merit. She said White never mentioned it when he interviewed her.

"Mostly the questions were about why I thought I'd be a good employee, what my qualifications were," she said.

As a recent widow, Lawson said she already struggled to make ends meet even with her Monroe County EMS job. Her firing both depressed her and depleted her finances. She works two jobs now, one as an EMS instructor at Roane State Community College.

"I felt defeated because it was my main source of income," she said. "I had a hard time adjusting."