PITTSBURGH (AP) – A federal court jury has awarded a southwestern Pennsylvania woman more than $13 million in a gender discrimination lawsuit, though her former employer may appeal and separately hopes a judge will agree to cap the damages at $300,000 under federal law.
An attorney for Sandra Robertson, 48, of German Township, announced the verdict Monday. It was returned by a U.S. District Court jury in Pittsburgh late Friday.
Robertson sued Hunter Panels, a Smithfield company which makes thermal insulation panels used in construction, and its parent, Carlisle Construction Materials Inc.
“This case is a very compelling story about this woman who really took it on the chin,” said Timothy O’Brien, one of Robertson’s three attorneys.
Robertson spent more than 20 years in the Air Force, retiring as a Master Sergeant in November 2004, and developed expertise in inventory and equipment management, which is what she was hired to do in June 2006.
She was quickly promoted to become the only female supervisor or manager at the Smithfield operation. In April 2012, she was fired after complaining that the company retaliated against her for reporting sexist language other employees allegedly used to describe her and what she claimed were false allegations that she was unprofessional, “abrasive and demeaning,” according to documents filed by both sides before trial.
Among other things, the company sent Robertson to a mandatory anger management program, “but the counselor said she didn’t need it and that she was just an assertive woman that they didn’t know how to deal with,” O’Brien said.
At one point, Robertson said she told company officials, “I thought we might have a ‘good old boys’ club here and they went insane over that,” Robertson said Monday.
The jury awarded Robertson $950,000 in compensatory damages – to cover her suffering, back pay and other income she would have earned had she not been fired, O’Brien said. The jury awarded that money after agreeing with Robertson that the company created a hostile work environment, discriminated against her and then retaliated after she complained.
The jury then awarded another $12.5 million in punitive damages – making the verdict one of the largest ever returned in the 25-county federal Western District of Pennsylvania – after finding the company acted “with malice or reckless indifference.”
O’Brien said he believed the large verdict was driven by a computer expert’s testimony that some paperwork used to document the company’s complaints about Robertson had been backdated, a claim the company disputed.
The business is “disappointed with the verdict, given the facts of the case …. we simply believe the wrong decision was made,” said Maria Danaher, one of the company’s attorneys.
“All options are being explored, including an appeal, as well as a request to mold the verdict consistent with statutory caps on damages in this type of case,” Danaher said, referring to federal law that caps Title VII discrimination claims at $300,000 for a company with more than 500 employees.
Robertson said the verdict “restored my faith in humanity. I could not believe the unconscionable lies that these defendants got up there and told.”
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