Boss testifies nurse hostile on prison job Suit against health service goes to jurors

BANGOR – Jurors hearing a wrongful termination lawsuit in Penobscot County Superior Court heard more contradictory evidence with testimony wrapping up Wednesday. Today, jurors will begin trying to decide whom to believe.

Joan Gilles, 67, of Dover-Foxcroft is suing Prison Health Services of Tennessee, claiming she was illegally fired from her job as a nurse at the Northern Maine Juvenile Correctional Facility in Charleston in December 1999. She is seeking unspecified damages.

Gilles claims she was passed over for promotions and eventually fired because of her age and in retaliation for complaints she made regarding problems with the medical care at the juvenile facility. Prison Health Services is under contract to provide medical care at prisons in Maine. Gilles and two other nurses testified earlier this week that nurses were short-staffed, undersupplied, undertrained and undersupervised.

The case was expected to go to the jury Wednesday, but testimony went slowly, pushing the attorneys’ closing remarks and the judge’s legal instructions into today. The jury is expected to begin deliberating late this morning.

For three days jurors were bombarded with conflicting testimony. They heard testimony from those who said Gilles was a professional, hardworking nurse who was picked on by her superiors for trying to improve medical conditions at the juvenile facility, and also from her superiors, who testified that she was a difficult employee who was unwilling to work as part of a team and who had it in for Prison Health Services.

On Wednesday, Margaret Volz of Dover-Foxcroft spent much of the day on the stand. Volz was Gilles’ immediate supervisor at the prison and told jurors it was her decision to fire Gilles.

“There was so much hostility. I couldn’t get her to focus. I couldn’t get her to move forward,” Volz testified.

Volz, who no longer works at the facility, testified that Gilles constantly complained about everything and that one doctor and a delivery service complained about her. A major issue arose in August 1999, when Gilles refused to take on the new responsibility of drawing blood from the juveniles at the prison. Gilles contends that she agreed to begin drawing the blood, but only after she received a refresher course on blood drawing in order to protect herself and the children.

Volz testified that Gilles was offered in-house training, but that she refused it. The company refused to pay for an outside refresher course, so Gilles paid for it on her own and took the course.

Volz testified, however, that Gilles never notified anyone that she had received the training and therefore arrangements were made to have someone else take blood samples.

Under direct examination by Prison Health Services’ attorney, James Fortin of Portland, Volz said she repeatedly tried to defuse Gilles’ anger and asked her what could be done to change her attitude.

“She told me that there was nothing I could do and that she ‘would get Prison Health Services if it was the last thing she did,”’ Volz told jurors.

Gilles’ attorney, Arthur Greif, later recalled Gilles to the stand to contradict most of Volz’s testimony.