Jury says ex-IPD cop owed $480,000

Former Ithaca police officer Chris Miller is entitled to damages totaling $480,001 because police department managers retaliated against him for claiming discrimination, a federal jury found Friday.

While a victory for Miller, the amount is far less than he stood to get after his original trial more than two years ago, and the case is likely not over. The city said it will seek to have the verdict thrown out.

The jury’s ruling in federal court in Albany came in two parts. It found the city owes damages of $220,000 for Miller being assigned less desirable patrol beats in 2009 out of retaliation for filing a discrimination claim. Then it found the city liable for another $220,000 for ultimately firing him on June 1, 2010.

On the latter part, the jury also found the police chief at the time, Edward Vallely, owes damages of $30,000, and then-deputy chief and now Police Chief John Barber owes $10,000. The other deputy chief, Pete Tyler, was found to owe the nominal damage of $1.

Typically, the city has insurance to cover legal liability and pays what is owed by its employees. In addition to any damages it might ultimately have to pay, the city likely will face big legal bills from both sides, including the employment-law attorneys hired to defend it, unless the verdict is overturned on appeal.

Miller filed a lawsuit in May 2010 alleging he experienced race and sex discrimination in uneven disciplinary actions, as well as retaliation for filing a human rights complaint. Miller won at trial in October 2012, but the judge later dismissed the part of the case over the beat assignments and ordered a retrial on the damages. The city unsuccessfully tried to have the whole case dismissed, and settlement talks in August failed.

Miller joined the department in 2000, and in 2005 filed a complaint with the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission alleging he was discriminated against in favor of less qualified minority candidates when he was not promoted to sergeant. The complaint was dismissed, but Miller filed others in 2008 and 2009 alleging he was a victim of retribution.

In spring 2010, he was given notice he was being fired on the grounds he’d lied on his original job application by omitting previous work with a Virginia police department. He maintained he quit on his own before he finished probationary training and thus never actually worked as an officer in Virginia, but there was testimony he’d been fired for vandalizing an officer’s sunglasses and not following directions.

The judge presiding at the original trial in September and October 2012 dismissed that jury’s $2 million award as excessive and ordered a retrial on damages. He upheld one part of the case but ordered a new trial over beat-assignment retaliation, the component decided Jan. 17.

Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick issued a statement Friday afternoon saying the city will pursue post-trial motions to “throw out this unjust verdict” and review options for appeal.

Myrick termed the verdict as “astonishingly inappropriate,” and noted an arbitrator concluded in 2013 that Miller “was employed as a police officer living a lie of having got the job under false pretenses,” an allusion to his Virginia history.

Miller’s attorney, A.J. Bosman of Rome, sought unsuccessfully to keep the arbitration decision out of the jury’s consideration as irrelevant in light of the liability verdicts already rendered. She could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.