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Female Worker Wins $885,000 in Bias Suit

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Times Staff Writer

A former Orange County Register circulation manager who says she was passed over for promotion twice in favor of less-qualified men won $885,000 from the newspaper Wednesday in a sex-discrimination award that legal specialists called one of the largest of its kind in the nation.

“I’m just ecstatic,” said Susan L. Martinolich, 43, of Orange. “This means that women at the paper are going to have to be taken more seriously, particularly in the circulation department. Women aren’t going to be afraid to stand up and be counted.”

Difficult to Prove

Lawsuits seeking to show sex discrimination in employment practices are extremely toughto prove and rarely go to trial, experts say. But Martinolich’s victory was mostly remarkable for the size of its punitive damages--$800,000--because she was not fired and was suing the newspaper alone, rather than as part of a class-action group, legal experts in the field said.

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In Los Angeles on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ronald S. W. Lew, finding that Martinolich was in fact discriminated against based on gender, accepted with only minor variations a jury verdict handed down the previous day after a two-week trial.

Anger at Verdict

Register officials expressed anger and surprise at the verdict and denied any wrongdoing in their treatment of Martinolich, who still works at the newspaper but has transferred out of the circulation department.

“It’s a miscarriage of justice, plain and simple,” said Tom Peterson, vice president for circulation. “My reaction is one of absolute shock, and so too with everyone in the department and this newspaper. We don’t believe for a minute that we did anything to discriminate against her.”

Peterson and the newspaper’s lead attorney in the case said they expect to appeal the jury’s decision.

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