Lawsuit describes bawdy court bailiffs
Dec. 7—RANDOLPH COUNTY — A former Randolph County Courthouse bailiff says in a federal civil lawsuit that he was fired after just two months on the job because he did not like the bawdy work environment encouraged by the sergeant in charge of the bailiffs, which he says included sexually charged talk and sexual harassment of women.
The lawsuit by Rickey Jason Spivey, 46, of Chatham County, against Sheriff Gregory Seabolt seeks unspecified damages, including back pay, lost earnings and damages for emotional distress.
Seabolt and the Randolph County Sheriff's Office have not yet filed a response to the lawsuit, which was filed in late November in U.S. District Court for North Carolina's Middle District.
In the lawsuit, Spivey says that on his first day working at the courthouse in August 2020, the sergeant in charge boasted that the courthouse was the sergeant's "because he had the sheriff in his pocket" and had the power to get a person reassigned out of the courthouse.
Within days after that brag, a woman bailiff was transferred out, and the sergeant claimed he had her transferred, using an expletive to describe her.
The lawsuit describes more than a dozen specific cases of inappropriate workplace behavior among the bailiffs, including the open sharing of a porn video and a number of sexually suggestive remarks by both men and women.
Before long the sergeant told Spivey that he was too serious and stiff and that no one wanted to work with Spivey because he would not cut up like everyone else, the lawsuit says. The sergeant also said that Spivey would not last long with the sheriff's office if he didn't loosen up.
In early September 2020, Spivey told the sergeant that "the behavior he observed by other deputies was unprofessional and offensive to him," the lawsuit says.
In the last week of September, the sergeant told Spivey that he was being sent home with pay, the lawsuit says. He would not say why, only that Spivey should wait for Seabolt to call him.
On the last day of September, the sergeant called Spivey and said Spivey was scheduled to meet with Seabolt the next day at 3 p.m. When Spivey arrived, Seabolt was not there, and another officer told Spivey he was being fired because of "a policy violation."
"Plaintiff was never written up or warned, even to the date of his termination, about any misbehavior on his part," the lawsuit says, alleging that the sergeant had "prepared backdated memoranda and solicited statements against Plaintiff for the purpose of making a case to terminate Plaintiff's employment as a consequence of Plaintiff's disapproval of the offensive behavior among other deputies and ... (the sergeant) himself."
