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.
Notes from the jury’s deliberations were not made available in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. But jurors’ basic questions and answers about the case were made public. The jury agreed that at least one SRR management official acted with malice or reckless indifference that compromised Saulsberry’s rights when she was not given a fair chance for reinstatement. For that, the contractor was ordered to pay $1 million in punitive damages.
The jury does not believe race played a role in Saulsberry’s inability to get rehired in 2014 and 2015, according to its verdict forms. However, jurors believe she was denied a job because SRR personnel did not honor “protected activity,” which, under federal law, allows a worker to speak up against a co-worker without fearing a wrongful consequence. In Saulsberry’s case, reporting her co-worker counted as a protected activity and led to her being unfairly punished, according to the jury. For that, Saulsberry will be awarded $55,000 in compensatory damages, and another $420,000 in back pay.
The jury did not order Saulsberry’s reinstatement.
Savannah River Remediation has 30 days to appeal the decision. In an emailed statement Monday, spokesman Dean Campbell stated: “While we are pleased that we prevailed on the race discrimination portion of the lawsuit, as well as the court’s dismissal of several other claims prior to trial, we are disappointed in the decision rendered at the trial court on the retaliation claim. We will examine all of our options going forward, including the possibility of an appeal.”
