W. R. Berkley Corp. Insurance company logo displayed on smart phone. Photo:
IgorGolovniov/Shutterstock.com

After serving for nearly a decade as the top lawyer for W.R. Berkley Corp. subsidiary American Mining Insurance Group, William Schrimpf was fired about a month before his 58th birthday based on an email he sent to another employee. 

Now, Schrimpf is calling out the CEO of AMIG in a federal age discrimination lawsuit against his former employer. 

Schrimpf alleges in a complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama that Birmingham-based AMIG and W.R. Berkley, one of the country's largest commercial lines insurance companies, "engaged in a pattern and practice of discrimination against older workers." He alleges that the firm has forced out at least 13 other senior employees. 

Schrimpf served as general counsel, chief claims officer and senior vice president and had an annual salary of $192,000 before he was fired in June 2018. He alleges that he witnessed AMIG president and CEO Chandler Cox complaining during open meetings "about the financial drag that older executives" put on the company before adding that "they needed to get the head count down."

After showing older employees to the exit, Cox and other members of the executive management team "would comment that the expense ratio 'just went down,'" Schrimpf states in his suit. 

A spokeswoman for W.R. Berkley declined to comment on the allegations. The insurance holding company has not responded to the lawsuit.

Schrimpf asserts in his complaint that he was never disciplined and had "stellar performance reviews, including strong and favorable ratings for his interactions with others." Nevertheless, he says the defendants used an email he sent to a colleague as a pretext to fire him. 

He says he used language in the email that held the other employee "accountable for repeated mistakes costing the defendants hundreds of thousands of dollars," but asserts that his message "was not inconsistent with any policy or practice of the defendants."  

"Oddly enough that employee was terminated from his position with the W.R. Berkley organization the following week," Schrimpf wrote in a complaint he filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a few months after he was terminated.

The EEOC investigated Schrimpf's claims and was unable to conclude that AMIG or W.R. Berkley violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The commission subsequently dismissed the complaint and notified Schrimpf of his right to sue in November. 

Schrimpf has asked the federal court to award him back pay and order AMIG to give him his job back. The position is currently held by Greg Hamlin, who was in his 30s when he succeeded Schrimpf, according to the suit. 

As for Schrimpf, he's "currently looking for a new opportunity to build and manage a successful team," according to his LinkedIn profile.