Passaic County taxpayers have paid a huge price to settle a lawsuit filed by two former Health Department employees who accused their boss of repeatedly harassing them with a barrage of sexist, racist and xenophobic comments.

The county recently settled the lawsuit brought by plaintiffs Dolly Bosire and Dawn Wilkes for just under $4 million, which ended more than six years of litigation in U.S. District Court.

Under terms of the settlement, Bosire receives $554,360 and Wilkes, $453,567 for damages, but the biggest piece of the pie —$2,937,466 — is split among four law firms on both sides of the case.

The case, which became bogged down in a blizzard of motions over evidence issues and never came to trial, left Passaic County taxpayers on the hook for the settlements and the legal costs of the plaintiffs, which totaled $742,072, and the defense, which came to $2,195,392.

"The more discovery there is, the more motions there are," said Freeholder Bruce James. "And this case just seemed to last forever."

Passiac County is self-insured, which means it pays all settlements and legal fees with tax dollars from the general treasury instead of through money received from an insurance claim. This year the county set aside $3.5 million for legal costs, but it also has $12.6 million in reserve for these kinds of settlements.

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History of discrimination

In the lawsuit, Bosire and Wilkes painted a picture of Irene Jessie-Hunte as a finger-wagging head of the Health Department who didn't like children, single mothers, gays or foreigners — and let it be known to her staff.

The plaintiffs accused her of publicly shaming them in front of other employees, calling them "heifers," and warning them not to get pregnant, suggesting they might lose their job.

Bosire, a Kenyan citizen, claimed that in 2009, Jessie-Hunte initially refused to fill out an application to renew her work visa "based on her well-known bias against immigrants and aliens, particularly immigrants or aliens of African descent, like Plaintiff Bosire," according to the complaint. Jessie-Hunte completed the application after the county administrator, Anthony J. DeNova, told her to do so, the complaint said.

And after Wilkes, a field representative, became pregnant in 2009, Hunte commented, "Don't you believe in birth control...that's why I don't like hiring women of child-bearing age? Your mother should be ashamed of you," because she wasn't married, according to the complaint.

Passaic County hired Jessie-Hunte in 2009 to be its Health Officer, the top job in the department. Other employees besides Bosire and Hunt filed complaints against her, and Jessie-Hunte's own confidential secretary kept a diary detailing alleged incidents, court records show.

Passaic County held a disciplinary hearing against her, and she was placed on 12 months of probation in November 2011. The county also brought in a counselor to hold group therapy sessions with Jessie-Hunte and her workers, court records show.

Jessie-Hunte resigned as Health Officer in 2013 and has not worked for the county since. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Through discovery, the plaintiffs' attorney, Justine D. Santagata, of the firm Kaufman, Semeraro & Leibman, sought records and emails regarding all complaints made against Jessie-Hunte and what the county did about them.

The defense, led initially by Albert C. Buglione of the firm Buglione, Hutton & DeYoe, dug in on discovery, rejecting most of the plaintiffs' record requests as "over broad" or "burdensome" or flat-out "irrelevant." That prompted Santagata to complain to U.S. Magistrate Cathy Waldor in February of 2015 that Passaic County was stonewalling.

“There is no reason for Defendants to still be in default of our Discovery demands," Santagata wrote in one of many motions to the Court. "They have made no good faith effort to cure the default. They did not even make a good faith effort to begin with. This motion is that simple."

Buglione said the record requests went all the way back to 2008 when Jessie-Hunte was hired, and amounted to an electronic fishing expedition. “This case was very document intensive and required a lot of computer forensics," Buglione said.

More attorneys

All the while, the clock was ticking, and the legal fees were piling up. Another dispute arose when the plaintiffs argued that Buglione could not could represent both Jessie-Hunte and the other defendants in the case, such as the Passaic County Health Department and the freeholder board, without there being a potential conflict.

The court agreed.

Buglione stepped aside and Passaic County hired two new law firms, the Weiner Group Group and Lum, Drasco & Positan. The new arrangement was even more costly for the county.

Over the next 2 1/2 years, Weiner Law would wrack up $1,548,861 in legal fees. Lum, Drasco & Positan rang up $589,542. Buglione's bill was much smaller: $56,989, according to county records.

Michael Glovin, the Passaic County counsel, acknowledged the case was "a real mess," and said the county was in a bind. It was trying to fend off a potentially big settlement.

The plaintiffs originally asked for $3.5 million, he said. Glovin said that in civil rights cases such as this one, the defendant is responsible for the legal fees for both sides if the plaintiffs receive a settlement.

"If the plaintiffs receive $1 as a settlement, then we're responsible for all the legal fees, he said.