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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Appeals court upholds $4 million award in employment discrimination case

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A split panel of appeals court judges at the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District delivered a split decision Nov. 7 in a former administrative law judge's (ALJ) employment discrimination case. 

Matthew D. Vacca, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, had taken his disability discrimination case to jury trial in 2015, and the trial resulted in a verdict in his favor for $4 million in compensatory damages, $2.5 million in punitive damages against the Division of Workers' Compensation and $500,000 in punitive damages against the director of the Workers’ Compensation Division of the Missouri Division of Labor & Industrial Relations, Brian May.

Vacca had served as an ALJ from 1992 through June 2011. He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in the mid-1990s.

Among the many events leading up to trial included Vacca's complaints that a "successful" employment review was "highly discriminatory" and that he should have been rated "highly successful," according to the ruling.

It further states that Vacca believed this rating was based on a "belief that a disabled person under a disability accommodation cannot be successful or highly successful."

The Department of Labor, Division of Worker’s Compensation and May had appealed the St. Louis City Circuit Court judgment in favor of Vacca on his claim alleging retaliation under the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA).

Vacca also cross-appealed the trial court's decision granting May's motion for a new trial on damages, or in the alternative, reducing the punitive damages against May.

The majority panel that included Justices Sherri B. Sullivan and Kurt S. Odenwald found that the trial court, led by Circuit Judge Julian Bush, did not err in denying the defendants' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict based on judicial principle of estoppel, in which litigants can't take positions that run contrary to previous statements.

Sullivan and Odenwald also held that Judge Bush did not err in denying the defendants' request for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

However, they reversed the punitive damages awards, holding that while Vacca "has demonstrated a violation of the MHRA, he failed to prove by clear and convincing relevant evidence outrageous conduct by Appellants (defendants) evidencing an evil motive or reckless indifference. As such, the trial court erred in submitting the issue of punitive damages to the jury."

They also held that in light of evidence Vacca presented on his continued ability to work, the defendants "failed to demonstrate the compensatory damages award was excessive, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion by overruling their motion for remittitur of compensatory damages."

And finally, the majority reversed an award of post-judgment interest to Vacca.

In dissent, Justice Roy L. Richter said he would have reversed the trial court's denial of the defendants' motions and suggestions in support of judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or in the alternative for a new trial, or in the alternative for an elimination of punitive damages and a reduction in fee awards based on judicial estoppel.

"After reviewing the timeline of Vacca’s filings in this present case and his dissolution proceedings that began in 2011, the trial court should have granted Appellants’ Motions and Suggestions in Support of Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict, or in the Alternative for a New Trial, or in the Alternative for an Elimination of Punitive Damages and Reduction in Fee Awards on the basis of judicial estoppel," Richter wrote.

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