Once the interest charges are calculated and added, the state's costs for Pat Rowe Kerr's case against Larry Kay and the Missouri Veterans Commission could top $4 million.
Without the interest calculation, the bill stood at $3,877,672.59 - including attorneys' fees and case costs for both the July 2016 trial and the 2017 appeal to the Missouri Court of Appeals in Kansas City, the $1.3 million in actual damages and $1.575 million in punitive damages.
But Kerr's case isn't the most expensive to be paid from the state's Legal Expense Fund in 2017, according to the reports on more than 200 judgments and settlements posted on Attorney General Josh Hawley's official website.
That honor goes to Beverly Wilkins in a case against Harris-Stowe State University, St. Louis, paid in July for more than $5.572 million.
A few other cases in the reports were for more than $1 million - including Gracia Backer's $2 million settlement with the state Labor and Industrial Relations Department last January, after she filed a wrongful termination case against the Nixon administration when she was removed as the state's Employment Security director while DOLIR Director Lawrence Rebman was appointed an administrative law judge.
In October, the Legal Expense Fund paid another $616,000 in the case that Backer and Lucinda Guthrie filed against Rebman.
However, news reports in November said the total bill for two cases Guthrie filed will be $1.1 million.
Hawley took office in January and began posting monthly reports showing expenses from the Legal Expense Fund, and as of this weekend, the reports were posted through October.
The bulk of the payouts in the 212 cases listed through October were only for hundreds or thousands of dollars - not hundreds of thousands or millions.
Hawley is the first attorney general to make those lists available on the website.
His office still was calculating the fund's expenses from previous years, because the reports from those years were not available immediately when the News Tribune asked for those numbers last week.
Kerr's case isn't listed yet since the state hasn't paid the bill - because Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem just before Christmas awarded the final attorneys' fees and costs related to the state's appeal.
She served as the Missouri Veterans Commission's ombudsman until early 2009 when she was transferred to another position.
She was terminated Nov. 10 with then-Director Larry Kay saying her job and some others were cut because of budget issues.
After receiving a right-to-sue letter from Missouri's Human Rights Commission, Kerr sued the Veterans Commission and Kay in 2011.
Beetem heard the case during a 10-day trial in July 2016, and a jury rejected the state's defenses.
Kerr's attorney, Jerry Dobson, of St. Louis, said last week the jury's award in her case was fair.
"I think the jury was well-aware that part of the tragedy of this case was all of the veterans who lost the benefit of Pat's knowledge and passion to help them. As an advocate for veterans, there is absolutely no one who was comparable to what Pat Rowe Kerr did," Dobson said.
"I think the much larger cost to the state is through the illegal conduct which cost veterans the services of Pat Rowe Kerr and her team that worked diligently to make the lives of veterans better."
Both Dobson and Lt. Gov. Mike Parson said there's no connection between Kerr's case and problems in the Veterans Home at St. Louis that resulted in Kay's decision to resign earlier this month.
Commission spokesman Daniel Bell said Kay's resignation was verbal, and there was no letter spelling out his reasons for leaving.