Jury Clears DuPage County in Wrongful Termination Suit

DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin announced last week that a jury has found DuPage County did not violate former employee Kerry Vinkler’s rights under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) when the County terminated Vinkler in the fall of 2012.

The jury reached their verdict after approximately thirty minutes of deliberations following a three-day-long trial in Federal Court.

In July, 2005, DuPage County hired Vinkler to serve as its Director of Animal Care and Control. In the fall of 2012, authorities with the County’s Human Resources Department were made aware of allegations that among other things, Vinkler would leave work and not return for extended periods of time and falsified her time sheets.

Following an investigation into the allegations, it was discovered that Vinkler had indeed falsified her time sheets on at least one occasion. Based on the findings of the investigation, Vinkler was terminated from her employment at DuPage County on October 19, 2012.

In her suit against the County however, Vinkler claimed that she was terminated from DuPage County in retaliation to taking FMLA designated time off from October 4, 2012 through October 16, 2012.

“The residents of DuPage County deserve and expect County employees to show up for work every day and do their jobs,” Berlin said. “The evidence in this case overwhelmingly showed that DuPage County was well within its rights to terminate Ms. Vinkler. Simply put, Kerry Vinkler was hired to do a job and when it was discovered that she was not performing, she was let go. I would like to thank Judge Darrah for ensuring a fair trial for both sides as well as the jury for seeing through Ms. Vinkler’s ridiculous claims of wrongful termination. I would also like to thank First Assistant State’s Attorney Nancy Wolfe as well as Assistant State’s Attorney’s Greg Vaci and Bill Roberts for their work in protecting the County’s interests and good name in this lawsuit.”