7th Circuit reinstates $3.5M punitive award in Title VII case

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A Chrysler employee produced sufficient evidence of recklessness to justify a substantial award of punitive damages in a Title VII hostile environment case, the 7th Circuit has ruled in reinstating a $3.5 million jury verdict.

The plaintiff is Cuban-American and Jewish. He worked as a pipefitter at a Chrysler assembly plant. More than 50 times in a three-year span, he was the target of racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic graffiti that appeared around the plant.

The plaintiff sued for hostile work environment. A jury found Chrysler liable and awarded $709,000 in compensatory damages and $3.5 million in punitive damages.

The district court vacated the award of punitive damages, concluding that the plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence for the jury to decide that Chrysler recklessly disregarded his federally protected rights.

But the 7th Circuit found ample evidence to support the jury’s punitive award.

“Chrysler argues that it cannot be liable for punitive damages because it made a good-faith effort to comply with the requirements of Title VII. A good-faith effort at compliance, however, is not a matter of declarations about how much the employer cared about a victim of harassment or about how hard certain [human resources] employees say they worked to rectify the situation. …

“When those declarations are belied by the employer’s actions, talking a good game will not immunize an employer from a judgment that it was reckless. The jury reasonably determined that Chrysler’s actions did not add up to a good-faith effort to end [the plaintiff’s] harassment, and, much less, that its actions were (at least) reckless,” the court said.

U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit. May v. Chrysler Group, No. 11-3000. Aug. 23, 2012.