TOPEKA — A federal court jury concluded a four-day trial Thursday by declaring Kansas Bureau of Investigation Director Tony Mattivi did nothing procedurally wrong by driving out the law enforcement agency’s associate director over accustrations of contributing to a toxic work environment.
The jury unanimously sided with Mattivi in a lawsuit filed by former Associate Director David Hutchings, who claimed the director unilaterally dismissed him from the KBI in violation of his constitutional right to due process. Hutchings argued Mattivi possessed authority to remove him from the administrative job for any reason, but was required by state law to demote him to a KBI special agent job before dismissal proceedings through the civil service system.
Mattivi defense lawyer Tom Lemon convinced the jury Hutchings voluntarily resigned from the KBI after a one-on-one meeting with Mattivi in June 2023.
Lemon concluded Hutchings was initially motivated to exit the KBI because a quiet departure would allow him to avoid an embarrassing personnel fight likely to reveal allegedly unethical or illegal acts. However, Lemon said Hutchings reversed his decision to resign after consulting with an attorney and in anticipation of landing a payout of $335,000 or more.
When the dust settled in U.S. District Court in Topeka on Thursday, the eight-person jury found Mattivi more credible than Hutchings. The first...
News Corp Australia uses software that manages crawler bot traffic on our websites. If you receive this message and are not a crawler bot (and are just a reader or subscriber), please try these ste...