On March 5, 2010, a jury in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found Novartis Pharmaceuticals liable for retaliation in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), awarding Mary Kate Breeden over $289,669 in back pay.  Under the FMLA’s liquidated damages provision, this amount is automatically doubled and entered as a partial judgment of $579,338.  The District Court has yet to decide the amount of front pay, attorney fees, and costs to award.

Kate Breeden worked as a pharmaceutical sales representative for Novartis.  After announcing that she was pregnant, Novartis cut her sales territory in half leaving her with fewer and smaller accounts.  When she objected to the change, her supervisor said it was temporary and that she would be made “whole.”  Upon returning from maternity leave, Ms. Breeden was informed that the changes were permanent.  Novartis later reorganized the sales territories again, at which time they consolidated her territory with another and eliminated her position.  Defending their actions, Novartis claimed that an outside consulting firm organized the realignment and did not take Ms. Breeden’s FMLA leave into account.  However, her maternity leave was mentioned in a Powerpoint presentation given by the consulting firm.

The jury found that Novartis retaliated against Ms. Breeden by cutting her sales territory when she announced that she was going to take leave or later when Novartis refused to make her “whole” after she returned to work, ultimately hurting her career and leading to her termination.  Ms. Breeden is represented by Adam Augustine Carter and R. Scott Oswald, Principals at The Employment Law Group® law firm.  For more information about Mr. Carter, Mr. Oswald and the firm’s Family and Medical Leave Act Discrimination Practice, click here.

Judge Norma L. Shapiro (U.S. Dist. Court. ED Pa) awarded Melissa Brown $160,000, more than double the jury award against her employer, Nutrition Management, for its bad faith violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

Under the FMLA, any damages award is subject to mandatory liquidated damages equal to the amount of the award itself, unless the employer can show that it acted in good faith.

Noting that the FMLA does not define “good faith” and that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to provide a definition, Judge Shapiro stated that “[r]easonable good faith requires a defendant to take affirmative steps to ascertain the requirements of the law.”  Here, Judge Shapiro held, Nutrition Management’s conflicting testimony regarding its reasons for terminating Ms. Brown lacked credibility.  Further, Judge Shapiro held, testimony that Nutrition Management “reasonably believed” there was no FMLA violation without any evidence of any affirmative steps taken to understand its legal obligations was insufficient to meet its burden of proving good faith.  Thus the court held that it “would be a clear error of law for the court not to amend the judgment to include liquidated damages.”

For information on The Employment Law Group® law firm’s Discrimination practice, click here.  To view the decision discussed above, Brown v. Nutrition Management Services Co., No. 06-2034 (E.D.Pa. Jan. 21, 2009), available here.

A jury awarded a woman $1.8 million in her pregnancy and sex discrimination suit against her employer for firing her because of her pregnancy and related medical conditions.  The jury awarded the woman $600,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress and $1.2 million in punitive damages (subject to award cap).

The employer denied the woman’s request for unpaid leave beyond her four weeks paid leave.  Instead, the employer informed her that she must return to work a mere three weeks after her Cesarean delivery, which left her child in intensive care, or be terminated.  This employer-imposed return date was 30 days sooner than her doctor recommended date.

For information on The Employment Law Group® law firm’s Discrimination Law practice, click here. The above case is Smith v. Normandy Props. LLC, No. 07-cv-351 (W.D. Pa. November 20, 2008).