Million-dollar jury verdicts in equal employment opportunity (EEO) cases sometimes mask large cuts in final judgments due to federal caps on compensatory and punitive damages. Karla Gilbride, general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has criticized the caps as too low to dissuade employers from breaking anti-discrimination laws.
In a Jan. 11 order, a judge found that a truckload carrier, Werner Enterprises, intentionally discriminated against a truck driver, failing to hire him because he is deaf and denying him a reasonable accommodation. A jury awarded $36 million in punitive damages and $75,000 in compensatory damages, but due to the damages cap, the judge reduced the combined award of compensatory and punitive damages to $300,000. The judge also awarded $35,682 in lost wages.
The damages cap wasn’t even 1 percent of the jury’s intended award, Gilbride said.
“These caps, which were set by Congress decades ago, take away juries’ power to deter large employers from engaging in intentional discrimination against workers,” she said. “Juries who have heard the evidence should be able to push employers who knowingly or recklessly break the nation’s workplace civil rights laws without constraints from outdated caps on damages.”
Werner Enterprises declined to respond to a request for comment.
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