Massachusetts Court Upholds Discrimination Verdict

The Associated Press reported on October 5, 2009 that a former pharmacist at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed she was fired after asking to be paid the same as her male colleagues is entitled to $2 million in damages awarded by a jury, according to a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  See, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113515362 .  As stated in the article, Cynthia Haddad was fired in 2004 after working more than 10 years for the company, seven of them at a store in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  While the company claimed that Haddad was fired because she left the pharmacy unattended and allowed a technician to use her computer security code to issue prescriptions during her absence, Haddad alleged in her discrimination lawsuit that she was fired because she complained about being paid less than her male counterparts, including a bonus given to pharmacy managers.  It states in the article that the company paid the bonus, and then fired Haddad two weeks later. 

As described in the article, a jury found in 2007 that the company discriminated against Haddad, and awarded her $1 million in compensatory damages and another $1 million in punitive damages, but a judge later revoked the $1 million in punitive damages, finding there was an insufficient basis for the jury’s decision.  However, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reinstated the punitive damages and upheld the total verdict, ruling that the jury had enough evidence to find that the company’s stated motive for the firing was a pretext and that the company acted with “discriminatory animus.”