by Jacob Monty
Compliments of The Monty Law Firm
Jacob M. "Jake" Monty, Jake is the senior and founding shareholder
of the Firm. He is Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law
by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Mr. Monty sits on
the INS Roundtable of the District Director of the Houston office
and is outside counsel to the Mexican Consulate in Houston on
labor issues.
A jury returned a verdict of $30,475,000 against
the Toro Company for terminating long-term employee Steven Jones
allegedly in retaliation for filing a workers' compensation
claim.
For fifteen years, Steven Jones worked as a process
technician for Toro Company. While repairing faulty equipment at
the Toro plant, hot plastic escaped from a machine and landed onto
his hand, severely burning it. He filed a workers' compensation
claim the same day, and Toro terminated Mr. Jones the day after.
Subsequently, Mr. Jones filed suit against Toro
alleging that he was terminated in retaliation for filing a workers'
compensation claim. Toro argued that it terminated him for failing
to take a drug test the day he got injured. However, Mr. Jones'
attorney provided evidence that demonstrated that numerous Toro
employees who had been injured in the past and did not take drug
tests were not fired.
On November 1, 2001, an El Paso, Texas jury returned
a verdict in favor of Mr. Jones and awarded him $25,000.00 for past-lost
benefits, $150,000 for future-lost benefits, and $300,000 in damages
for mental anguish. Additionally, the jury awarded Mr. Jones $30
million in punitive damages. Needless to say, if Mr. Jones had signed
a mandatory arbitration agreement, no arbitrator would have levied
millions of dollars of punitive damages against Toro.
Notwithstanding the recent Supreme Court decision
in EEOC v. Waffle House, which allows the EEOC to seek victim-specific
relief despite the presence of an arbitration agreement between
an employer and employee, mandatory arbitration agreements are still
a preferred avenue to avoid juries from awarding outrageous punitive
damages. The Waffle House decision only affects those cases in which
the EEOC decides to litigate. Remember EEOC litigates only 1% of
all job bias cases filed with the agency. In most cases, it issues
employees a right to sue notice empowering the employee to bring
lawsuits against the company. The Waffle House decision will not
affect 99% of all employment litigation cases.
Indeed, there are several advantages of arbitration
over litigation:
-
Qualified decision makers decide the cases,
not jurors who are themselves employees;
-
Reasonable awards that do not include outrageous
punitive damages; and
-
Speedy resolutions that do not take years
to resolve.
Since the average jury award exceeds one million
dollars, the bulk of which is punitive damages, it makes sense to
have an employee sign a mandatory arbitration agreement, which will
take the decision out of the jury's hands and place it in the hands
of an arbitrator.
Remember Texas Restaurant Association members can implement
a mandatory arbitration agreement program (English/Spanish) for
a flat fee of $420.00.
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