A federal jury on Friday ordered a contractor at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site to pay nearly $1.5 million in damages and back pay to a former employee who said she was subjected to wrongful retaliation after she was laid off six years ago.
Jurors who heard the case last week agreed race could not be proven as a factor in Adrienne Saulsberry losing her job with Savannah River Remediation (SRR). However, the jury found that Saulsberry, an African-American woman who worked as a first line manager with SRR, was a victim of malice and retaliation at the hands of some co-workers.
Saulsberry was laid off in 2013 as part of a workforce reduction of more than 450 other employees. But in her August 2016 lawsuit, she contended Savannah River Remediation let her go because she reported a white co-worker for making racially insensitive comments.
Furthermore, Saulsberry’s legal team asserted that when she applied for at least two more first-line manager positions after the layoffs, she was not even called in for an interview. That was a red flag since federal law mandates that employees in good standing at the time of a mandatory reduction should get a greater opportunity for reinstatement.
Instead, the two positions Saulsberry applied for after being laid off went to white employees who were less experienced than Saulsberry. In the suit, she sought reinstatement, back pay, and payment of her legal fees by SRR.
The jury ordered Savannah River Remediation to pay $1 million in punitive damages to Saulsberry, plus $55,000 in compensatory damages and another $420,000 in back pay. It did not order her reinstatement.
In a statement Monday, Savannah River Remediation said it would “examine all of our options going forward, including the possibility of an appeal.”
