Sen. Doug Berger
Youngsville Democrat
Third Term

What two things would you cut in the state budget?  He said there could be savings in merging worker safety programs in the Industrial Commission and the state Department of Labor.

He also said there was a lot of duplication in education programs, such as anti-smoking efforts, in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Are there any taxes you would be in favor of increasing? He said additional revenue could be found in removing the sales tax cap on the purchase of automobiles.

— Rob Christensen 

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to pay an Oxford woman $320,000 to settle a sexual harassment case involving a former supervisor at John Umstead Hospital with a prior history of mistreating female workers, according to the woman's lawyer.

Dorothy Hawley won the settlement last month, Raleigh lawyer Jack Nichols said in a news release. Her former supervisor, James Hobgood, had been convicted of assaulting she and another female employee in October 2000. Hawley had also accused him of on-going sexual harassment, Dan Kane reports.

Hawley filed suit against Hobgood and the state five years ago, and evidence showed that Hobgood had been fired from another state facility 22 years earlier. In that case, Hobgood had been disciplined for sexual harassment after complaints from female staff. His personnel file noted that he was "not eligible for re-employment with the state," Nichols said.

"Our firm felt that Dorothy Hawley was entitled to a remedy for her mistreatment by James Hobgood and John Umstead Hospital," Nichols said. "Public employers are now on notice that they are subject to such claims in the same way that private employers can be held liable. For John Umstead, the cost of not checking on an employee's prior behavior was a six-figure damages award."

Hawley had won $433,000 in damages from the N.C. Industrial Commission, but the state appealed the award. Mediation resulted in the $320,000 settlement.

Nichols said the lawsuit represents the first time someone had sued the state under a claim of negligent hiring, negligent retention and negligent supervision of an employee.

On his last day at work, Gov. Mike Easley gave the acting head of the Department of Cultural Resources a new job.

Easley appointed Staci Meyer to the N.C. Industrial Commission. Meyer was the chief deputy and general counsel to the department who ran things when Secretary Libba Evans went on extended, unpaid leave.

Meyer spoke for the department in defense of two departmental trips to Europe that included first lady Mary Easley. 

Meyer told her staff of her appointment Monday. The commission oversees workers' compensation.

"I will strive to provide meaningful and effective service to the State through this appointment," Meyer wrote.

A state Industrial Commission official has found that a Cumberland County man severely beaten by a state trooper 23 years ago is entitled to seek damages of up to $100,000.

Richard Wayne Barfield, 50, suffered major head injuries from the beating by Trooper Geary Blackwood, 56, outside a convenience store in Fayetteville in 1985, Dan Kane reports. Surgeons had to remove a piece of his skull and patch his head together with cranial plaster and a plate.

Blackwood said he did nothing wrong and was defending himself, but the patrol let him go shortly after the arrest and said he had acted outside of the scope of his authority.

The state used that argument to deny having to pay Barfield compensation, but Deputy Industrial Commissioner Wanda Taylor found that a state law passed three years ago no longer allows the patrol to assert that defense.

Her ruling gives the state three options: settle the case, proceed to a hearing on damages or appeal her decision to the full commission. The maximum amount Barfield could receive is $100,000, which was the limit under the law at the time of the beating.

Barfield's attorney, J. Michael Gay of Hillsborough, praised the decision. The attorney for the state, Special Deputy Attorney General William Borden, could not be reached.

Richard Wayne Barfield's 23-year-long battle for compensation from the state after he was badly beaten by a state trooper during a traffic stop will go on for at least another month.

Barfield's attorney, J. Michael Gay of Hillsborough, said today that Deputy Commissioner Wanda Taylor of the N.C. Industrial Commission heard preliminary arguments in the case this morning, then gave Gay and the state Attorney General's office 30 days to submit legal briefs, reports Dan Kane.

Sometime after that, Taylor will decide whether to award up to $100,000 in compensatory damages to Barfield, dismiss the case as the state wants, or call for an evidentiary hearing.

Read more after the jump.

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