CHARLESTON – An Ohio woman says she was wrongfully terminated from her job at a Huntington psychiatric hospital.
Susan Kelley-Jarrell of Proctorville, Ohio, filed her complaint August 3 in Kanawha Circuit Court against the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources as well as four executives with Mildred Mitchell Bateman Hospital in Huntington. Those four are CEO Craig Richards, Assistant CEO Kim Mannon, Assistant Chief Nursing Executive Jami Boykin and Human Resources Director Tamara Kuhn.
According to the complaint, Kelley-Jarrell was the Chief Nursing Executive at the psychiatric hospital. She began working there August 1 2020. On her first day, she says Boykin told the plaintiff she was taking Boykin’s job and said, “Vengeance is mine.”
On January 4, 2021, she says Richards and Mannon failed to invite her to a policy committee meeting, but they invited Boykin. Later that month, Kelley-Jarrell told Mannon of a hostile work environment she was being subjected to by employee Stanley Simmons. A few days later, the plaintiff is named the hospital’s employee of the month.
In February 2021, she says she received an email concerning a hostile work environment being created by Boykin. After a meeting, she files a hostile work environment grievance against Boykin and Pattie Green on March 1, 2021.
Kelley-Jarrell lists various meetings canceled, meetings she was excluded from, emails she was excluded from, denials of contact with other employees, email exchanges regarding overtime and tension between HR and nursing staffs, patient issues, emails about hostile work environment, workplace webinars, grievances, being placed on a Performance Improvement Program, staffing requirements, training requests, ongoing hostility, nurse hirings she didn’t approve, unanswered emails and other issues she had from March 2021 until October 2021.
On October 27, 2021, she says she received a predetermination conference notice alleging she told a nurse manager to falsify a staffing worksheet, secretly recorded videos of conversations of hospital administrative staff as well as DHHR management staff, was not presented as required for facility governing board meetings and failed to provide the nursing department report at those meetings, failed to attend medical executive committee meetings as required, created a hostile work environment and had continued complaints of such.
The meeting took place November 1, 2021, and Kelley-Jarrell was told the investigation was ongoing. Two days later, she was fired and filed a wrongful termination grievance. She says she told Workforce WV she never was given specific details of the allegations and challenged the allegations. She says her termination appeared to be for whistleblowing as she has talked with regulatory agencies and the facility had an impeding Joint Commission survey.
Kelley-Jarrell accuses the defendants of violating the West Virginia Human Rights Act, creating a hostile work environment, wrongful termination, intentional infliction of emotional distress, vicarious liability, breach of express or implied contract, negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent training and civil conspiracy.
She seeks joint and several compensatory damages for her losses, injuries and damages as well as punitive and exemplary damages, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
On September 11, the four individual defendants filed a motion denying the allegations and seeking to be dismissed from the case.
Kelley-Jarrell filed a lawsuit in 2015 accusing the Wayne County Board of Education of discriminating against her when she wasn’t hired for a few health instructor positions. That case was dismissed in 2016.
She is being represented by Jon D. Hoover of Hoover Law in Barboursville. The individual defendants are being represented by Perry Oxley, Brian Morrison and Paula Jo Roberts of Oxley Rich Sammons in Huntington. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Tera Salango.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 23-C-664
