Trial court awards sexual harassment plaintiff $75,000 for pain and suffering

The plaintiff worked as a correction officer for the Ulster County Jail in Kingston, N.Y., where she was exposed to sexual harassment in the form of officers and supervisors walking around and openly reading pornographic magazines and utilizing pornographic screen savers on their computers. Plus she had to deal with a male coworker and his "vibrating chair." The jury found the County was liable under Title VII and also 42 U.S.C. 1983 because the pornography was so widespread that it amounted to an unofficial county policy. The jury awarded the plaintiff $200,000 in damages. That amount has been reduced to $75,000.

The case is Legg v. Ulster County, 2022 WL 909045, issued by the Northern District of New York on March 29. The plaintiff for our purposes is Watson. This case was filed in 2009, and the events giving rise to the case began in 2007. The trial was in 2014. Joe Ranni, Esq., and Brendan Klaproth, Esq., tried the case. I got involved following the verdict and handled the post-trial motions and appellate work.

Since Watson prevailed on her Title VII and Section 1983 claims, the jury awarded her $200,000 on each claim. Post-trial, the trial court sustained the Title VII verdict but reduced the $200,000 award to $75,000. The trial court also vacated the Section 1983 verdict entirely, holding there was no evidence the harassment was so widespread that the County could be held liable under the "policy or practice" element of a municipal liability claim. 

The case went to the Court of Appeals twice, first in 2014 and again in 2017. Two years after the oral argument on the second appeal, all appellate issues were resolved in 2020, when the Second Circuit reinstated the Section 1983 verdict that the trial court had vacated in 2017, the case returned to the trial court to resolve the outstanding new trial motions, one of which claimed the $200,000 pain and suffering award. With me so far? It's complicated.

On remand, the trial court had two issues: can defendant get a new trial on the Section 1983 claim on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, and is the $200,000 pain and suffering award on the Section 1983 verdict too high? On the first issue, the trial court says a new trial is not in order because the Court of Appeals already said the County is not entitled to judgment as a matter of law on this claim. While a JMOL motion carries a different standard than new trial motions, there really is no point in ordering a new trial if the Court of Appeals has already held the evidence sufficed to support the verdict under Rule 50. 

That brings us to the pain and suffering award. Jurors don't know this, but once they render the verdict and head home, the lawyers will spend the next few years fighting about whether the verdict represents true justice, and whether the jury awarded too much money. Trial judges will defer to the jury's judgment, but only to a point. In the Second Circuit, we have a matrix that allows the judges to assess the propriety of a pain and suffering award in employment discrimination cases. As Judge Scullin noted in this case:

“In the Second Circuit, non-economic damages can fall into one of three categories—garden-variety, significant, or egregious.” “Awards compensating garden-variety emotional distress or mental anguish in the Second Circuit range from $30,000 to $125,000.” Courts in this District have recently found awards of $40,000 or $50,000 to be appropriate for garden variety emotional distress claims resulting from a hostile work environment where the plaintiff's emotional distress did not require medical treatment or result in physical manifestation.

I argued that these numbers are outdated, as the $30,000-$150,000 calculation stems from court rulings in the 1990s, and that we should increase these numbers to keep up with inflation. The Court disagreed. Since it deemed Watson's pain and suffering "garden variety," it rejected the County's argument that she can only recover $30,000, but it also found that $200,000 is too high. The Court ruled Watson can recover $75,000. Here is the reasoning on the pain and suffering in this case:

At trial, Plaintiff Watson testified that, after she started working with [sexual harasser] Divorl five nights per week, she “began to withdraw from [her] life” and from her children. She testified that she began having “marital issues” because she “couldn't talk to [her] husband.” Plaintiff Watson further explained that she “became very depressed, very anxious,” had a hard time with “day-to-day life,” and hated going to work. On cross-examination, Plaintiff Watson testified that she had “emotional problems” unrelated to her work as well. She was prescribed Pristiq and Xanax because of her emotional distress related to work, and she stated that she received those medications “in relation to what was going on with [her] husband and [her] as a result of what was going on with [her].” Notably, Plaintiff Watson did not submit any medical evidence to support these claims nor did any family members or friends testify to her condition. 

This evidence, and the fact that Watson recovered $75,000 in pain and suffering for the Title VII claim, results in a $75,000 award on the Section 1983 claim.