A Los Angeles jury just awarded an insurance executive more than $155 million for his retaliation claim against his former employer, Farmers Insurance (Farmers). According to the plaintiff’s attorney, this was the largest verdict in Los Angeles County and the third-largest of its kind in California. Let’s take a look at how Farmers received such a large monetary damage award.

Rudnicki v. Farmers Insurance Exchange

The plaintiff was Andrew Rudnicki (Rudnicki), a senior vice president who oversaw Farmers’ in-house legal division. According to his lawsuit, Rudnicki began working for Farmers in 1979 as a trial attorney and slowly made his way up to senior vice president, a position he obtained in 2013.

In 2016 Farmers fired Rudnicki. Farmers claimed it had several reasons for terminating Rudnicki’s employment, including:

• Making sexist comments to coworkers.
• Not taking appropriate action when female employees complained about the underrepresentation of women in management at Farmers.
• Not properly handling potential document preservation policy violations.

However, Rudnicki was fired right after Famers settled a discriminatory pay class-action lawsuit for about $4 million. In that lawsuit, he gave deposition testimony that supported the plaintiffs’ allegations that Farmers discriminated against its female attorneys. He was also expected to testify at the subsequent trial.

Rudnicki claimed his termination was retaliation for cooperating and assisting in the settled...

Read Full Story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2022/01/03/insurer-gets-hit-with-155-...