Record age discrimination case: $10 million in punitive damages
June 19, 2008 by Jean Murray
Baby boomer employees, including a company “superstar,” were terminated from Avaya, Inc. in favor of younger employees. In a resultant age discrimination case against Avaya, the jury awarded $10 million in punitive damages. The award is believed to be a record for punitive damages in New Jersey.
The case was based on the experiences of employees in one department who were allegedly purged in favor of younger employees. All but one of those terminated was replaced by a younger person. As you read about the case, notice that the employees were given “improvement plans” and then fired when they did not meet the plan goals. Employers are getting “smarter” by providing better documentation before firing. But it’s difficult to believe that all those employees, including the alleged “superstar,” were under-performers.
Was the jury angry? Most likely. After all, they were probably baby boomers themselves. It is one of the advantages of being a baby boomer: there are so many of us, in such a wide age range. I’m guessing it will become more common for employers to try to “incentivize” older workers to get them to retire, making room for younger employees.
In other posts in April, we talked about previous age discrimination cases and provided our own experiences with possible age discrimination. We also discussed what to do if you feel you have been a victim of age discrimination.
(Avaya is a communications systems applications and services company based in New Jersey.)
What do you think? How do you prove that an improvement plan was not warranted?