A Fresno recently awarded nearly $750,000 in damages to a former Farmers Insurance employee in an wrongful termination case based on age discrimination.
Both sides agree that plaintiff Warehime was hired to work in the Visalia office in January 2002. At the time, the company was going through a transition from paper files to electronic files. During the trial, Farmers' attorney told the jury that Warehime never embraced the new technology and rejected training to become a better employee. When workload backed up on her, he said Warehime "blamed others for her problems." The employer's attorney further said Farmers had good reason to terminate Warehime: she was low-balling customers on their claims, which led to costly litigation for the company. Toole, Warehime's attorney, showed the jury evidence that Warehime had been a valued Farmers employee: she did the training requested by Farmers and the company honored her with awards and good to outstanding job-performance ratings each year from 2002 to 2005. "She was a committed team player and good with customer service," he told the jury. Toole said the climate began to change in the summer of 2003 when Warehime learned that one of her Fresno supervisors "wanted to hire his own people." Warehime was given higher caseloads than other employees, and when an employee left the company, she was given those files, too, Toole said. She asked her supervisor to balance the workload, "but nothing happened. No files were reassigned and she continued to drown in these files," Toole told the jury. Things got worse for her, Toole said, because the Fresno office was filled with young, hip employees, Toole said. Warehime started hearing thing like: "I don't want to work when I'm your age" and "The old fuddy-duddy is coming in." In October 2005, Plaintiff complained to her supervisor that an evaluation of her work was inaccurate and unfair. The supervisor responded by telling her to improve her performance. The stress became so intense, Warehime suffered a mental breakdown in February 2006, forcing her to take a leave of absence while her doctor treated her from depression and anxiety. Warehime's doctor cleared her to return to work on June 12, 2006. But when she showed up to work, a young man was sitting at her desk, and Plaintiff soon found out that she was fired. This case involves a common combination of age discrimination and disability discrimination / failure to honor medical leave to which an employee is entitled under ADA/FEHA or FMLA.
4 Comments
5/23/2022 01:51:45 am
Cutbacks because of Covid are a chance for some employers to attempt to move away with illicit age discrimination. They are wishing to "cutback" their older workers and change them with younger employee straight away or after a short span of time under the pretence of slow business and demanding economic times. This is particularly filling in during tough economic times, when several employer desires they could change higher paid workers, with lot of junior workers for a notably lower pay. In what is certain to be a close at hand watched case, the EEOC presently filed its initial ADA pandemic-associated case outlining to COVID-19 and an employee’s call to work from home. The EEOC states that ISS Facility Services, Inc., a workstation proficiency and facility management company, illicitly contradicted an employee’s reasonable request for lodgings for her condition and then fired her because of her ailment and in retribution for asking for an accommodation.
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Mr Gale Coleman
5/23/2022 08:41:22 am
I am soliciting for your representation in the implementation and release of the settlement i had with my previous employer .
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2/2/2023 11:43:56 am
That one of her Fresno supervisors wanted to hire his own people. Warehime was given higher caseloads than other employees, and when an employee left the company she was given those files, Thank you for the beautiful post!
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