Taryn Piers sued the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) in the Circuit Court of Buchanan County, Missouri, raising claims of retaliation under the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA), associational disability discrimination, and sex discrimination. Following a jury trial, the jury found in favor of Piers on her retaliation claim and in favor of DOC on her claims of sex discrimination and associational disability discrimination. DOC appealed the judgment entered against it on Piers’s retaliation claim to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District.
Factual Overview
Taryn Piers was employed by DOC as a Probation and Parole Officer I since 2011, with the goal of working as a Drug Court Officer. In 2018, she became a Drug Court Officer, a position she found more fulfilling than her previous role. Piers had used Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave to care for her son, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and sought approval to use flex time to put in 40 hours per week. When a new supervisor (Supervisor) took over, Piers faced challenges in getting approval for flex time and FMLA leave. Supervisor also put several written notes of performance violations in Piers’s file.
In July 2019, Piers emailed a DOC District Administrator to report that Supervisor was subjecting her to a hostile work environment. In November 2019, Piers was transferred by DOC to the Community Supervision Center, a different location from the Drug Court. Piers was upset and unhappy with the work required at the new job, and her caseload almost doubled.
Legal Analysis
Preservation of Error (Points I and II): DOC raised two points on appeal, claiming that the trial court erred in denying its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) because Piers failed to prove DOC took materially adverse action in transferring her to a new job or that the transfer resulted in harm to her. The court found that DOC failed to preserve these claims of error in its motion for directed verdict at the close of all the evidence, as required by Rule 72.01(a). DOC’s motion for directed verdict stated only that there was insufficient evidence to prove any of Piers’s three MHRA claims, without providing specifics about which elements of the claims failed or why. The court held that DOC’s motion contained only “boilerplate” language and failed to preserve the issues presented in its JNOV motion for appellate review.
Admission of Undisclosed Witness Testimony (Point III): DOC argued that the trial court erred in allowing Piers’s mother (Mother) to testify because she was not identified before trial as a witness. The court found no abuse of discretion or outcome-determinative prejudice resulting from the decision to allow Mother to testify. The court noted that even if DOC was surprised when Piers called Mother as a witness, DOC did not ask the court for additional time to speak with or depose Mother. Moreover, Mother’s testimony was cumulative to evidence already presented by Piers. The Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, affirmed the judgment, holding that DOC failed to preserve error by the trial court in denying its motions for directed verdict or JNOV based on insufficiency of evidence and failed to show error by the trial court in overruling DOC’s objection to testimony.
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