The jury awarded the plaintiff $2 million for pain and suffering and $250,000 in lost wages after finding that she suffered employment discrimination. The employer challenges the verdict, claiming the verdict sheet had errors that required a new trial. The plaintiff takes up an appeal of her own, challenging the trial court’s order reducing the pain and suffering award to $200,000. None of the appeals prevail. The verdict stands, but the pain and suffering stands at $200,000. I will address the damages award in an upcoming blog post.
The case is Emamian v. Rockefeller University, issued on August 19. Plaintiff is an Iranian-born research scientist whose supervisor made her feel uncomfortable in asking numerous questions about her headscarf with a “sarcastic” and “negative” attitude, and he told her that wearing headscarves is a sign of submission to men among Iranian women. Plaintiff also claims she was singled out because of her race and national origin in that she was aggressively questioned and belittled during a lab presentation, received little support from her boss with regard to research, writing, or obtaining another position, and her boss did not think there was anything wrong with an email that made fun of “camel drivers,” a racial slur against Middle Easterners.
The trial lasted six weeks. The plaintiff won. But there was confusion on the verdict form, which is every judge’s nightmare. I would imagine that during judicial training at the start of their judicial service, judges are told to watch out for verdict sheet errors. New York has a particularly unforgiving rule about bad verdict forms that are not discovered until after the jury goes home. Federal law is not much different. A trial judge does not want a retrial because of a simply verdict sheet error that could have been avoided before it was given to the jury. Once the jury answers a bad verdict form that may give rise to inconsistent answers, there is a limited window for the trial court to deal with it before we all have to start over with a new trial. Since this was a lengthy trial, the court cannot afford that.
The jury first said on the verdict form that the university treated plaintiff “less well” under the New York City Human Rights Law because of her race/national origin. But the jury then said on the verdict form, in response to a second question, that plaintiff did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant intentionally discriminated against her at least in part because of her race/national origin, and/or gender, and/or religion. The second question put these protected characteristics in the same sentence. These answers are in conflict, so the trial court told the jury to return to the deliberations room to iron this out. The jury came back within three minutes to confirm that defendant had discriminated against the plaintiff because of her race/national origin.
While the defendant challenges how the trial court handled the conflicting verdict form, the Court of Appeals (Livingston, Park and Underhill [D.J.]) says the trial court handled things with aplomb. The jury was brought back right away before their judgment could have been tainted by the outside world or the parties to the case, and it was the jury that first told the trial court that there was an inconsistency with the verdict form. The Court of Appeals draws guidance from a recent Supreme Court ruling, Dietz v. Bouldin, 136 S. Ct. 1885 (2016), that held the jury may be recalled to correct an error in the verdict form. There may be limits to the trial court’s authority to haul the jury back into the case, but this case does not test those limits.
The more interesting objection is defendant’s claim that the verdict form did not give the jury a chance to even say there was no discrimination at all, as it simply asked if the plaintiff proved that the university treated her less well because of her national origin, gender, etc. There was no yes/no option for this question. But the Court of Appeals says the jury must have known it could have left that question blank if it decided the plaintiff did not prove her case, as it left a separate question blank on the nominal damages issue. Plus, the verdict form asked, “which of the protected status, if any, do you find” motivated the discrimination. The italicized language left open the possibility that the jury could find that no protected status motivated the discrimination. The verdict form could have been clearer, but it was good enough.
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