A nearly $3 million arbitration award was won by a former KBR employee who said she was raped in Iraq. Tracy K. Barker, wife of a U.S. Army sergeant and the mother of five, was awarded $2.93 million in private arbitration proceedings in Houston. “Arbitration, generally speaking, favors employers, and,…
A federal jury awarded more than $6.2 million in an age discrimination suit brought by two scientists who said they were fired from their jobs at a Chester County, Pa., chemical manufacturing firm when the company targeted only older workers in layoffs in 2005. The jury concluded that PQ Corp.’s…
A Marin County supermarket clerk who urinated on herself at the checkout counter after her supervisor refused to let her take a bathroom break is entitled to a $200,000 damage award, a state appeals court has ruled. The woman, identified only as A.M., had returned to work at an Albertson’s…
The city of South Gate has paid out $18 million to settle lawsuits filed by a group of officers who said they faced racially-motivated discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the aftermath of the ouster of a Latino police official in 2002, according to the officers’ attorney. Sixteen police officers filed…
The MA state Supreme Judicial Court restored $1 million in punitive damages awarded to a former pharmacist at a Wal-Mart in Pittsfield, who said she was fired after complaining about being paid less than her male colleagues. The verdict – which also upheld a jury award for more than $700,000…
The proposed settlement of a pair of lawsuits charging that Eastman Kodak Co. discriminated against African-American employees is now in a judge’s hands. Lawyers for the plaintiffs this week filed a motion asking that U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan W. Feldman approve the settlement worked out between the company and the…
A teacher has settled a discrimination lawsuit against a private school in Anne Arundel County that federal authorities said had fired him because he has the virus that causes AIDS. In the consent decree approved by U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. in Baltimore, Chauncey Stevenson is to receive…
The case of a Texas woman who alleges she was gang-raped by co-workers while working for a military contractor in Iraq will go to court instead of arbitration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. A divided three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled Jamie…
The world’s delivery giant, United Parcel Service, has been receiving some unwanted packages these days from the federal government: lawsuits. Last weekl, in what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is calling a “major class lawsuit,” UPS was sued in federal court in Chicago for allegedly denying sufficient medical leave to…
When she was thrown out of nursing school just 13 weeks before graduating, Sara Castle was humiliated. Still, she knew she and her classmates weren’t getting the clinical training they needed because an instructor repeatedly dismissed students early — a practice Castle exposed, and the teacher was fired. But Castle,…