A Little Rock police officer who was fired and then reinstated last year by court order is suing the city for refusing to recognize his seniority when making patrol assignments.
The Police Department considers Corey Dion Hall's hiring date as Nov. 1, 2011, according to the suit Hall filed Monday against the city. He argues that the city is bound by an agreement negotiated last year by the Fraternal Order of Police to figure his seniority based on his original Jan. 1, 1995, hire date.
He is asking Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray to order the city to recognize his original hire date.
Seniority plays a role in determining Hall's days off, what shifts he works and to which police precinct he is assigned.
Hall, 40, was fired in August 2011 after getting into a scuffle at a River Market bar. He said he was provoked by racial slurs made against him by another patron. His lawsuit against Willy D's Piano Bar was settled on confidential terms in February, court records show.
He sued the city in 2012 after the Civil Service Commission upheld his firing. He was represented by attorney Bob Newcomb, who remains his lawyer in the new litigation.
A jury last year rejected Hall's claims at trial that his firing was racially motivated. Then-Circuit Judge Jay Moody reinstated him in June 2013 after a separate proceeding, ruling that the Police Department had not fired other officers who had acted similarly or worse than Hall.
Moody commuted Hall's punishment to a 30-day unpaid suspension and ordered that he be paid $24,558 in back pay, but he also ordered that Hall, who had been a sergeant, be reduced to rookie officer status.
After the ruling, court filings show, Hall complained to the judge that the city was figuring his seniority status from November 2011.
Invoking the city's employment agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police, Hall asked Moody to order the city to recognize his seniority as beginning in January 1995. Moody, now a federal judge, refused in a July 2013 ruling.
City lawyers argued that the judge's reinstatement order reset Hall's seniority at 2011.
The city stated in court files that the reduced seniority for Hall is exactly what the judge intended, pointing out that the judge ordered Hall to be reinstated as a rookie officer, beginning Oct. 10, 2011, and that subsequent pay increases be based on that time frame.
"It is my intention that he work his way back up through the ranks starting as a probationary officer," Moody wrote to the sides in an email announcing his ruling.
Metro on 08/17/2014