The Region - News from March 1, 1987

A Garden Grove insurance-claims adjuster fired without warning from his $29,000-a-year job has been awarded almost $2 million in damages by an Orange County Superior Court jury, which found that he had been unfairly terminated. Raymond G. Singer, 63, had offered to settle his case against the Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. for $300,000 before the trial. Instead the jury awarded him $254,000 in back wages, $200,000 for emotional distress and $1.5 million in punitive damages. Singer, who worked in Ohio Casualty’s Fullerton office, was fired after he acknowledged he had approved a $600 payment to a contractor to repair wind damage to a policyholder’s home without first personally inspecting the house.