Lowndes County, District 1 Supervisor Harry Sanders and District 3 Supervisor John Holliman are asking that former county administrator Ralph Billingsley’s wrongful termination suit be thrown out, according to court filings.
Billingsley sued the county, as well as Sanders and Holliman as individuals, in 2021. He claims he was forced out of his job due to age discrimination and that Sanders and Holliman defamed him by claiming oversights he made cost the county money.
Billingsley submitted notice of his retirement on March 23, 2020, and retired in September 2020. District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks told The Dispatch at the time that he thought Billingsley was being forced out of his position by Sanders, Holliman and board president Trip Hairston.
On July 8, 2020, Billingsley filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim alleging he had been forced out, and filed a lawsuit in the District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi in March 2021.
Grenada-based attorney Robert Dambrino III, who is the lawyer representing Sanders, asked the judge to throw the suit out for a variety of reasons in a motion filed May 12. First, he argues that there is no admissible evidence of age discrimination.
Dambrino, in his motion, states that there are four positions in county government that can be hired and fired by the supervisors: board attorney, county engineer, county road manager and county administrator. All of those positions, at the time of Billingsley’s firing, were held by people who were more than 60 years old, with one — County Engineer Bob Calvert — in his 80s.
Billingsley was 66 when he retired.
“Plaintiff’s age had nothing to do with the termination of his employment with Lowndes County,” Dambrino writes.
Billingsley, in his complaint, also alleged Sanders defamed him by saying he had “cost the County a million dollars” and had been underperforming in his job. One of the complaints against him by the supervisors was that he had allegedly mishandled property tax collections, and so Dambrino argues Billingsley was not, in fact, defamed.
“Lloyd Price, Chief Financial Officer for Lowndes County, stated in his deposition that there was a miscalculation made in the county budget,” the motion reads. “His testimony was that the error was ‘probably 650, 700,000 would be the amount that would have been returned to us from the state for (homestead exemption).’”
Price stated in the deposition that he was “partly responsible” for the mistake, but that Billingsley was “ultimately responsible” because his duties included presenting the budget to the board.
According to the motion, Holliman, for his part, said in a deposition that Billingsley failed to provide information to the volunteer fire department about $900,000 in grant funding to buy new radios, causing the county to have to buy them outright.
“It is clear from the knowledge known to the individual members of the Board of Supervisors and thus, to Harry Sanders, that they believed (Billingsley) was costing Lowndes County…money,” the motion reads.
The motion asks that Billingsley’s lawsuit be dismissed with prejudice — meaning that the suit may not be filed again — and that Billingsley be required to pay all the costs arising from the litigation.
“I think that there’s enough evidence in the record to go to the jury and let them decide,” Jim Waide, Billingsley’s attorney, said Monday afternoon. “But the judge will have to make that decision.”
Dambrino did not return a call seeking comment by press time.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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