Gracia v. Sigmatron International, Inc.

Record contained sufficient evidence to support jury's verdict in favor of plaintiff-employee's Title VII action alleging that defendant-employer terminated her in retaliation for having reported that her supervisor had sexually harassed her. While defendant claimed that plaintiff was terminated because she had failed to correct production error on customer’s order, jury could properly believe plaintiff’s denial regarding alleged incident, as well as disavowal of incident by co-worker, who, according to defendant, had initially reported incident. Moreover, plaintiff otherwise established causal link between her report of sexual harassment and her termination 6 weeks later, especially where evidence indicated that defendant had tolerated similar errors made by co-workers who had not protested sexual harassment. Also, record supported jury’s award of $50,000 in compensatory damages, as well as $250,000 in punitive damages, even though plaintiff merely stated that her termination was “hard” on her, and that she was depressed because she had always been used to working. Too, punitive damages were not excessive given defendant’s efforts to hide its retaliatory discharge by generating false paper trail that included manufactured details regarding plaintiff’s job performance.