Alamance County’s sheriff is apparently on the verge of a reprieve from a two-year-old federal court battle over the pay policies at the county’s detention center.
A federal magistrate judge issued a formal notice earlier this week about this apparent end to the long-running dispute between sheriff Terry Johnson and detention officers Andrew S. Beers and Katherine White.
“The parties have filed a notice of settlement,” Judge Joe L. Webster went on to declare in a laconic case update on Monday, “indicating that they ‘have reached an agreement that resolves all issues in this case.”
Webster’s notice follows a 60-day pause in these legal proceedings, which the judge implemented in February after the litigants informed him that they were ready to sit down at the negotiating table to work through their disagreement.
This cessation of hostilities came nearly 22 months after Beers first took legal action against Johnson over a pay policy that he argued had consistently shortchanged him and his fellow detention officers. At the time, jailers in Alamance County were automatically credited with 173.33 hours of shift work a month even though their individual schedules could range from 171.5 to 208.25 hours during that period. Beers objected that this arbitrary calculation tended to penalize the employee, and he proceeded to obtain class action status for his complaint so that other jailers could sign onto the suit.
Beers was eventually joined in his legal complaint by fellow detention officer Katherine White, who like him believed this policy had systematically undercounted her hours. Since then, the two professional colleagues have been laying the groundwork for a trial that the federal courts had tentatively scheduled for August 4, 2025.
The two sets of litigants eventually requested a 60-day stay in this case shortly after federal district judge Thomas E. Schroeder rejected a request from the plaintiffs to grant them a favorable judgment in lieu of a trial. Schroeder determined that there were genuine matters of fact that precluded a summary judgment, which is usually invoked when a case can be resolved based strictly on matters of law.
When he granted the 60-day stay on February 18, Webster declared that this move would give the parties “sufficient time to engage in further settlement negotiations.”
In his latest case update on Monday, Webster noted that the litigants are now ready to seek preliminary and final settlement approval from the courts – and take part in a “fairness hearing,” which is also apparently part of the process.
The magistrate judge went on to give the litigants 21 days to move forward with the aforementioned request for preliminary approval.
In a short statement on Tuesday, Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens insisted that he doesn’t have much to say at this juncture about the terms of the sheriff’s settlement with the jailers.
“The filing…from yesterday speaks for itself – at least for now,” Stevens replied to an inquiry from The Alamance News. “Until the settlement is accepted by the court, it is not final, so I really won’t have anything more to share until that time.”
