A jury ruled July 25 that a nurse was not the victim of age discrimination when she was fired in May 2015 from Columbia, Mo.-based Women's and Children's Hospital, according to The Columbia Missourian.
Cynthia Roberts, RN, now 64, claimed she was fired due to age discrimination in May 2015, when she was 60. Defendants in the case included the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri; Christina Vollrath, MSN, RN, director of nursing services at Women's and Children's Hospital; Matt Waterman, the hospital's director of surgical services; and Pam Holliday, manager of surgical services.
Mr. Waterman fired Ms. Roberts on May 7, 2015, two days after a patient complained about Ms. Roberts' "rude and disrespectful" behavior. Ms. Roberts had already been the subject of 12 disciplinary reports in a three-year period.
"She was terminated not just due to the final incident, it was also a culmination of previous performance incidents," testified Brenda Quinlan, the hospital's employee relations manager.
In response to Ms. Roberts' accusation that she made age-discriminatory remarks, Ms. Holliday said she didn't know she had offended Ms. Roberts and regretted saying that a new nurse on staff was "young, energetic and tan."
Ms. Roberts declined The Columbia Missourian's request for comment.