Federal judge sends $22M Benton sheriff lawsuit back to WA state court

A federal judge has ruled against the First Amendment violation claims brought by a group of current and former Benton County sheriff’s employees suing the county for $22 million.

Now a Washington state court will decide if the other claims warrant a massive payout.

Three years ago seven senior level sheriff’s command staff employees filed a claim against Benton County claiming the county didn’t do enough to stop former Sheriff Jerry Hatcher as he engaged in alleged targeted harassment, abuse and First Amendment violations.

Some of the employees retired, self-demoted to other positions or quit in the face of the ongoing issues.

They put the claim on a temporary hold during an ultimately successful campaign to recall Hatcher was placed on the ballot.

After Hatcher was removed from office in the November 2021 recall, the group refiled the claim and then a lawsuit in Walla Walla Superior Court. That lawsuit was moved to federal court in May 2022 to consider the First Amendment violation claims.

Federal Judge Stanley Bastian ruled that while some of the claims approached the threshold needed to constitute a First Amendment violation, none of them fully met the criteria. The county also asked Bastian to remove three of the employees from the lawsuit.

Bastian did not remove any of the plaintiffs before sending the lawsuit back to Walla Walla last week. Bastian also left the other causes for damage in tact, leaving them for the Superior Court judge to decide.

‘Bad boss, worse person’

Now a Superior Court judge will decide if the eight other allegations have merit.

They include:

• Vicarious liability, meaning the county is responsible for Hatcher’s actions

• Defamation

• Invasion of privacy

• Outrage

• Constructive discharge, meaning Hatcher made the work environment so unbearable they had no choice but to self demote, quit or retire

• Violations of the Whistleblower Act

• Retaliation

• Hostile work environment

The employees suing are Undersheriff Jon Law; Commander Mat Clarke; Lt. Jason Erickson; Lt. Erik Magnuson; now-retired Commander Steve Caughey; and former Detective Todd Carlson.

Sheriff Tom Croskrey also filed an initial complaint, but did not pursue the lawsuit after becoming sheriff.

The county does not dispute that Hatcher mistreated employees, but they believe Hatcher himself should be held responsible. Attorneys for Benton County argue the county did all it could, but because Hatcher was an elected official, he was in a unique position that kept them from being able to stop him.

The recent filing asked for the First Amendment claim and several other causes to be dismissed and for Clarke, Erickson and Carlson to be removed from the lawsuit. The county argued that those three employees did not have strong enough claims.

In a section titled, “Sheriff Hatcher Was a Bad Boss and Worse Person,” the county’s attorneys argued that his alleged abuse was indiscriminate.

“Defendant does not contest that Sheriff Hatcher was a bad sheriff and an even worse boss. As abhorrent as his behavior was, it wasn’t exclusionary – Sheriff Hatcher did not discriminate who he would terrorize; he belittled most in his path,” the county argued.

The county said that Hatcher’s bad behavior started well before he took office as sheriff, and that he “displayed tyrant behavior even as undersheriff.”

The county commissioners appointed Hatcher sheriff in 2017 and he later won election to keep the seat.

Pattern of abuse

The lawsuit says Carlson retired early in March 2021 due to retaliation from Hatcher, and Erickson self-demoted himself from lieutenant to sergeant to limit his interaction with Hatcher. Erickson has since been promoted back to lieutenant.

Caughey and another sheriff’s office employee quit in December 2020 after learning that Hatcher had unsuccessfully tried to place members of his own leadership staff on a “Brady” list because of their cooperation in a whistleblower investigation of the sheriff.

A month later in January 2021, prosecutors in Benton County placed Hatcher on a Brady list when he was possibly going to be a witness in the trial of a jail escapee.

The deputies also allege that after filing whistleblower complaints, Hatcher created a hostile work environment that included harassment and retaliation.

The lawsuit also says Hatcher made defamatory statements about Magnuson regarding a medical condition and politicized his private information. The lawsuit claims that after a SWAT incident led by Magnuson in which a suspect died, Hatcher was irate about having to deal with the media and threatened to choke Magnuson and to rewrite his job description to effectively terminate him without justification.

The lawsuit states that an investigation found the suspect died of a drug overdose and that officers acted appropriately. The lawsuit says Hatcher threatened violence against Magnuson on several other occasions.

It also says that Hatcher threatened to fire anyone who spoke to his estranged wife, who had made allegations of domestic abuse against him.

Hatcher was later investigated for allegations of witness tampering saying he had tried to force his ex-wife to recant her testimony.

After filing for divorce, Monica Hatcher filed a petition claiming Jerry Hatcher had strangled and threatened her in December 2017 when she confronted him about an ongoing extramarital affair.

Monica Hatcher later said her husband forced her to recant her abuse statements by writing a four-page email to a detective saying she is “confused about quite a lot of things” and cannot in good faith swear to what happened two years ago.

Monica Hatcher eventually sent the email so she could provide proof to her husband, but told investigators the following day that Jerry Hatcher was trying to manipulate her and other witnesses into not cooperating.

The domestic violence case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning prosecutors have the option to refile charges at a later date.