Retaliation

 

Affirmed

Record contained sufficient evidence to support jury’s verdict in favor of
plaintiff-employee’s Title VII action alleging that defendant-employer
terminated her in retaliation for having reported that her supervisor had
sexually harassed her. While defendant claimed that plaintiff was terminated
because she had failed to correct production error on customer’s order, jury
could properly believe plaintiff’s denial regarding alleged incident, as well
as disavowal of incident by co-worker, who, according to defendant, had
initially reported incident. Moreover, plaintiff otherwise established causal
link between her report of sexual harassment and her termination 6 weeks later,
especially where evidence indicated that defendant had tolerated similar errors
made by co-workers who had not protested sexual harassment. Also, record
supported jury’s award of $50,000 in compensatory damages, as well as $250,000
in punitive damages, even though plaintiff merely stated that her termination
was “hard” on her, and that she was depressed because she had always
been used to working. Too, punitive damages were not excessive given
defendant’s efforts to hide its retaliatory discharge by generating false paper
trail that included manufactured details regarding plaintiff’s job performance.