The California Court of Appeal’s Second Appellate District recently reversed a $13 million judgment against the University of California Los Angeles in a gender discrimination and age harassment lawsuit.
Superior Court Judge Michael Linfield, made a “series of grave errors” that were “cumulative and highly prejudicial” to UCLA and were evidence of “the trial court’s inability to remain impartial,” the appeal court ruled.
The case illustrates how the civil justice system in California favors plaintiffs and discourages new businesses, Anthony J. Oncidi, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm Proskauer told the Southern California Record.
“Because juries have unfettered discretion to award practically unlimited amounts of money for emotional distress damages and punitive damages to individuals who claim they have been mistreated by their employer, every case now has the potential of becoming a multi-million dollar disaster for an employer,” Oncidi said. “Arbitrators on the other hand are much more measured in terms of the amounts of money they award in cases like this, which at least gives employers more predictability of outcome.”
It is unusual for an appellate court to be as critical of a judge as they were in the UCLA case, said Oncidi.
“Most cases settle before an appellate court weighs in, but in cases where the judge engages in an abuse of discretion, there usually is a reckoning,” the attorrney said.
The harsh criticism in this ruling was “because there was so much that went wrong during the trial, which had an obviously prejudicial effect on UCLA,” Oncidi added.
Large verdicts like the one rendered against UCLA case are no longer unusual in Los Angeles, according to Oncidi, who wrote about the issue in the publication, JD Supra.
“I would say that at least in the Los Angeles Superior Court, large single-plaintiff verdicts like the ones I mention in my article are no longer ‘black swan events,’” he said, “We are seeing large verdicts like these coming out of the Los Angeles Superior Court with alarming frequency – at least once every six to eight weeks.”
Judges are allowing even weak cases to go to trial, he said.
“Enterprising trial lawyers can make their appeal directly to a ‘jury of peers’ – peers, by the way, of the plaintiff, not of the employer,” Oncidi said.