Autozone to pay $185Million For Telling Pregnant Woman She Can’t Do Her Job Anymore

[jackstar7]

You asked for the numbers... or was that a rhetorical question?

You'd been asking repeatedly prior to my asking. I'm curious to know why.

And yes, mine was rhetorical.

 

[Strk]

This is how and why

Can't really argue with that!

 

[woolfe9998]

While I'm not necessarily opposed to your plan, I'm not sure if it is constitutional.

I don't know enough about how this works to say but can the court force them to pay damages to people who aren't a party to the suit? Can the court force the recipient to pay part of their award to a third party? I wonder if someone who is a lawyer can weigh in.

I don't think this issue has come up in appellate opinions before. More than likely a law which permitted damages awards to third parties would be challenged on due process grounds. That is just my best guess.

 

[woolfe9998]

There is a kind of "proportionality" requirement imposed by due process, meaning that the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages can be subject to due process review by the higher courts. In this case the ratio is about 187:1.

I know that the SCOTUS has upheld ratios of 5-10:1. It has thrown out one of 500:1. The SCOTUS has also said it isn't a bright line, and other factors may come into play, like the possible amount of future harm caused if defendant's conduct had continued unchecked. Regardless, I think Autozone will have an appeal here. Since the award is so large, we may end up seeing another published opinion on this proportionality issue. There isn't much clarity in prior rulings of the court so perhaps they can do a better job of it this time.

Now, a practical observation based on experience: juries don't make punitive awards, especially really large ones, unless they are really pissed off at the defendant. Autozone must have made a very unfavorable impression here. Anyone remember the McDonald's coffee spill case from back in the 90's, the one where that woman got like $4 million after spilling hot coffee on her legs? Lots of people complained about that one. Apparently, the jury there made such a large award because the McDonalds execs acted like total douchebags on the witness stand. The moral of these stories is, it's best not to piss off juries. I can only imagine what must have gone on at this trial because these kind of awards are absurdly rare. Damn I wish that was my case. I could retire right now.

 

[woolfe9998]

I just dug deeper and found an article in the legal trades which explains what happened here procedurally. Damn, the OP's linked article leaves a false impression when it says Autozone gave up its challenge to the verdict. What happened is that Autozone made a post-trial motion for a new trial (based on the alleged misconduct of plaintiff's counsel and a juror), but while the motion was pending, the parties went to mediation and settled for some confidential lesser amount of money.

Bottom line: Autozone isn't paying out $185 million. They are instead paying out an undisclosed lesser amount.

 

[Jeff7]

That's a mighty big leap of logic there. You seem to be assuming that all claims of some sort of discrimination in the workplace are in fact true and valid. We don't know what proportion are actually valid complaints, the percentage of cases that are lost by the plaintiff means absolutely nothing.

Yeah, that's a valid point.

I will still note that Autozone has allegedly been doing this for quite a few years without significant consequence. Besides that, there's the prevailing attitude throughout our history that the cost of paying another person to do work for you is one of the most horrifically terrible things a business can incur. I didn't know any better at the time, but I was even asked about marital status when I was being hired. But, I'm also a white male. (Though I'm sure I could quickly eliminate that advantage by uttering the word "atheist" during an interview.)