Farmers Insurance Exchange and Farmers Insurance Group must pay a former senior vice president more than $155 million for firing him in retaliation for testimony he was set to give in a class pay bias lawsuit by the companies’ female in-house lawyers, California court records show.
The verdict in favor of Andrew Rudnicki, who ran the companies’ in-house branch legal offices, includes $150 million in punitive damages that a California Superior Court jury awarded Thursday.
It’s believed to be the third-largest such verdict in the state and the largest in Los Angeles County, attorney Carney R. Shegerian told Bloomberg Law Friday. He is with Shegerian & Associates in Los Angeles.
“We disagree with and are disappointed by the verdict, and we are considering options available to us,” the companies said Friday in an email.
Rudnicki had been with Farmers for 37 years at the time of his discharge, beginning as a trial attorney in 1979, according to his August 2017 lawsuit. He rose from supervising attorney to senior vice president, a role to which he was promoted in 2013, the suit said.
But trouble developed as Rudnicki was being prepared to give deposition testimony in Coates v. Farmers Insurance Group Inc., an equal pay case in California federal court, Shegerian said. His client knew about past sex bias in the companies’ legal group and was also aware of...
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