{"id":550,"date":"2014-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/events-lindabury.blawgcloud.com\/2014\/11\/ignorance-of-employee-rights-proves-costly-jury-awards-hundreds-of-millions-in-pregnancy-discrimination-suit.html"},"modified":"2025-02-05T11:28:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:28:30","slug":"ignorance-of-employee-rights-proves-costly-jury-awards-hundreds-of-millions-in-pregnancy-discrimination-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/ignorance-of-employee-rights-proves-costly-jury-awards-hundreds-of-millions-in-pregnancy-discrimination-suit.html","title":{"rendered":"Ignorance of Employee Rights Proves Costly &#8211; Jury Awards Hundreds of Millions in Pregnancy Discrimination Suit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By: Kathleen Connelly, Esq.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-auto-zone-discrimination-verdict-20141118-story.html\">reported<\/a> that following eight years of protracted litigation, a San Diego jury awarded nearly $186 million dollars to a former AutoZone manager who claimed she was demoted by AutoZone after she announced her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/resources\/Great_Expectations_Expanded_Workplace_Accommodations_Available_to_Pregnant_Employees_under_LAD_and_EEOC_Guidance\/\">pregnancy and was terminated<\/a> after she filed a lawsuit challenging her demotion.\u00a0 The reported testimony of trial witnesses serves as a perfect illustration how an employer\u2019s ignorance of basic employee rights can lead to obscenely high jury verdicts.<\/p>\n<p>Rosario Juarez claimed that when she announced her pregnancy to her district manager in 2005 he responded \u201cCongratulations . . . I guess\u201d adding \u201cI feel sorry for you.\u201d\u00a0 Thereafter, Juarez\u2019s performance was increasingly criticized and she was demoted.\u00a0 After Juarez filed suit to challenge her demotion, she was terminated for allegedly misplacing $400 of company funds.\u00a0 However, AutoZone\u2019s defense of the case was crippled by the testimony of its loss prevention officer who investigated the missing funds that she never suspected wrongdoing by Juarez and thought she was being targeted by the company.\u00a0 To make matters worse, a former district manager testified that he was scolded by an AutoZone vice president for hiring too many women. Such testimony undoubtedly provoked the jury to award $185 million dollars in punitive damages as a punishment to AutoZone, in addition to the $872,000 awarded to Juarez for lost wages.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/ignorance-of-employee-rights-proves-costly-jury-awards-hundreds-of-millions-in-pregnancy-discrimination-suit.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading Ignorance of Employee Rights Proves Costly &#8211; Jury Awards Hundreds of Millions in Pregnancy Discrimination Suit\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Kathleen Connelly, Esq. The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have reported that following eight years of protracted litigation, a San Diego jury awarded nearly $186 million dollars to a former AutoZone manager who claimed she was demoted by AutoZone after she announced her pregnancy and was terminated after she filed a lawsuit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247],"tags":[],"coauthors":[139],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ignorance of Employee Rights Proves Costly - Jury Awards Hundreds of Millions in Pregnancy Discrimination Suit &#8212; November 26, 2014 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By: Kathleen Connelly, Esq. The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have reported that following eight years of protracted litigation, a San Diego\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/ignorance-of-employee-rights-proves-costly-jury-awards-hundreds-of-millions-in-pregnancy-discrimination-suit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ignorance of Employee Rights Proves Costly - Jury Awards Hundreds of Millions in Pregnancy Discrimination Suit &#8212; November 26, 2014 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By: Kathleen Connelly, Esq. The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have reported that following eight years of protracted litigation, a San Diego\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/ignorance-of-employee-rights-proves-costly-jury-awards-hundreds-of-millions-in-pregnancy-discrimination-suit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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