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News and Updates>
Lenow wins 27 Day Discharge Arbitration
Union Officers Ordered Back To Work With Full Back Pay
Mar 2, 2010 --
Arbitrator James LItton finally issued his long-awaited decision in the suspension and discharge of former ECCOA President Jerry Enos and former ECCOA Treasurer K. Ricky Thompson. Litton ordered that Enos and Thompson be reinstated with full back pay and benefits. The arbitration took 27 days of hearing. Enos and Thompson were discharged in September 2007 for the alleged reason that they were responsible for the content that appeared on the ECCOA's public web site discussion board and that their failure to monitor and remove objectionable postings authored by anonymous or sometimes named individuals, as well as because of some of their own postings. Arbitrator Litton ruled that the Sheriff did not have just cause to terminate either Enos or Thompson because the Sheriff and his command staff had not made timely objections to the allegedly objectionable postings and had not given Enos or Thompson notice they either could be held responsible for the postings that appeared on the website. While the union raised a host of legal defenses, including under the first amendment and the Communications Decency Act, the arbitrrator relied upon traditional just cause standards indirecting the reinstatement and back pay award. Arbitrator LItton also issued a decision on a thirty day suspension issued to Enos for failing to file an accurate report regarding a claim that the Sheriff's administrators had advance knowledge of an inmate riot.
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