Employment Discrimination Verdicts Often Get Reduced on Appeal
Retaliation cases often produce large jury verdicts. But, as Jon Hyman of The Ohio Employer's Law Blog points out, the verdict is not the end of the road. In fact, the losing side in a trial can reduce or reverse the verdict through post trial motions and appeals - the war continues even after the verdict. The large verdicts in employment discrimination cases frequently get media attention, but what is rarely printed is the fact that many of these verdicts are later reversed or substantially reduced on appeal. Lets look at a case that was recently profiled by The Ohio Employer's Law Blog.
Ronald Luri worked for Republic Services as a general manager. He reported to Bowen. In November of 2006, Bowen told Luri to fire the three oldest employees in the company and one of them had a disability. Luri objected because he thought that the terminations amounted to age and disability discrimination. Bowen then turned on Luri and began accusing him of misconduct and eventually fired Luri. Luri sued Republic Services for retaliation.
The trial did not go well for Republic as they were caught trying to cover things up and the jury apparently had no trouble finding that they retaliated against Luri. The jury awarded Luri $3.5 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $43.1 million in punitive damages.
The jury verdict, however, was just the beginning of the post trial process. Republic filed an appeal and appellate courts are known to reduce big verdicts, it happens all the time. Sure enough, the Court of Appeals of Ohio reduced the $43.1 million punitive damage award down to $7 million. The Court of Appeals applied a tort reform rule that limits punitive damage verdicts to twice the compensatory award. In that case, the compensatory award was $3.5 million so the punitive damage award was reduced to $7 million for a total verdict of $10.5 million. The net result is that the Court of Appeal reduced the verdict by 75%.
This is a common occurrence. Those big verdicts make great news paper headlines, but a high percentage (one report found that 85% of all employment verdicts are reduced or reversed on appeal) of them do not survive the appellate process. Knowing this, many people agree to reduce the verdict amount to avoid the appeal.
As a plaintiff's lawyer, I think that the Appellate Courts should avoid the temptation to reduce the verdicts. The jury is the body that heard the evidence and saw the witnesses - they know the case best and their verdict should be respected and only altered in rare cases.
