By Rhonda Simmons
Posted: Tuesday, April 8, 2014 4:00 pm
Updated: 2:37 pm, Wed Apr 9, 2014
A Culpeper jury ordered an ex-town employee in Culpeper County Circuit Court on Monday to pay $5,001 to his former co-worker whose coffee pot he admitted to spiking with his own urine five years ago.
James Carroll Butler, who turns 54 next Sunday, owned up to urinating in Michael Utz’s coffee pot in March 2009 because of “personal ill will and spite toward him.” Before the incident, Butler had worked for the town’s waste water plant for 17 years until his departure in 2009.
According to the jury’s verdict form in this civil matter, it found that Butler “committed battery upon Michael Utz or put him in reasonable fear of receiving bodily harm.”
Court records show, Butler targeted Utz, admitting to Culpeper Town Police Lt. Andrew Terrill that “he was hoping Utz was the person who would get the urine-tainted coffee.”