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HELENA — A jury in the United States District Court for the District of Montana ruled in favor of a former Montana Developmental Center employee who filed a lawsuit in 2012 claiming she was unlawfully fired from the position in May 2011.

The defendants in the lawsuit were named as Anna Whiting Sorrell, the director of the Montana Department of Health and Human Serivces, and Kathleen Zeeck and Larry LeRoux, administrators at the MDC.

Managers at the center — a state facility that provides services for those with mental and developmental disabilities — accused Elizabeth Pritchard-Sleath of trying to get a client to move in with her for romantic reasons after she filed a claim with Disability Rights Montana.

Sleath claimed that the patient needed to receive one-on-one supervision, “because of the great danger that the client would do himself harm,” the complaint in the lawsuit said, but the defendants ignored her claim and then “punished Plaintiff for innocent actions while imposing little or no discipline on employees who actually mistreated and abused patients.”