Gregory Noble, left, and Robert A. Ballard III, right, with O'Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble in Springfield. Courtesy photos

Attorneys at O'Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble scored a $500,000 verdict by showing a mayor's refusal to reappoint the city's public defender was motivated by gender bias.

A jury in Union County Superior Court awarded $450,000 in economic damages and $50,000 for emotional distress on March 12 to Joy Spriggs, who held the job of public defender in Plainfield for 15 years until her appointment was not renewed in 2017. Spriggs, a Plainfield resident, claimed that Mayor Adrian Mapp had a discriminatory motive when he replaced her with Douglas Mitchell, a nonresident of the town, in violation of a local residency ordinance.

Spriggs asserted that the cabinet appointed by Mapp was overwhelmingly male, and that he preferred to have men in such positions as public defender. Her lawyers said Mapp appointed few women to paying positions in his administration, but hiring of women increased after the suit was filed.

The verdict was awarded after a seven-day trial before Superior Court Judge Robert Mega. A previous trial before Mega ended in a hung jury on March 2.

The job of public defender is a one-year appointment, filled every January by the mayor with the advice and consent of the city council.

Under cross-examination, Mapp criticized Spriggs' professionalism, but when pressed to elaborate, it was clear he knew very little about her job performance, said Greg Noble of Springfield-based O'Connor Parsons, who represented Spriggs along with the firm's Robert Ballard III.

Mapp also argued that it was his prerogative to select his preferred advisers for positions that were subject to annual reappointment, and that Spriggs "didn't fit his vision." He also claimed during trial that Spriggs supported another candidate for mayor.

Noble says he and Ballard showed that the mayor could not deny a reappointment for discriminatory reasons, and that a municipal ordinance forbids the firing of a town employee based on politics.

"We were able to discredit their reasons that they stated in court," Noble said. Our argument was that she was no different from any at-will employee. She is not a policymaker. You can't effectively decide not to put someone's name up because of discriminatory reasons."

Spriggs became a public defender for Plainfield in 2001 and she rose to the position of chief public defender in 2006, supervising two other employees.

She claimed in her suit that Mapp attempted to fire her for exercising her rights under the New Jersey Family Leave Act while her husband was suffering from cancer. When he was told he could not terminate her for applying for family leave, he said he would "just fire her," the suit claimed. Spriggs also said in the suit that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from an armed invasion of her home in 2012. She claimed that she applied for disability benefits for her PTSD but learned that the city had terminated her enrollment in the state disability plan. But the judge did not permit her attorneys to bring those issues before the jury.

In December 2019, a month after the close of discovery, Plainfield's lawyer sought to admit into evidence 68 pages of documents that were said to demonstrate that Mapp had introduced the names of numerous female applicants for various paid and nonpaid positions with the city. Lawyers for Spriggs opposed their admission, but the judge admitted portions of the documents that concerned appointments to paid positions.

John Gillick of Rainone Coughlin Minchello in Iselin represented Plainfield, Mapp and the city council at trial. He confirmed the verdict but declined to comment on the case. Mapp referred questions to Plainfield Corporation Counsel David Minchello, of the same firm, who said "we're surprised and disappointed with the jury verdict and reviewing our options with regard to an appeal."