Damages Upheld for Witness in Sex Harassment Case : Courts: Justices reject employer’s assertion that only the claimant is protected from being fired.

The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that an employee who was forced to quit for supporting a co-worker’s claim of sexual harassment may sue his former employer for damages.

The court upheld a $1.34-million award to the employee, a former insurance sales manager, saying that the employer violated public policy by trying to get him to withhold information from state authorities investigating the female co-worker’s harassment complaint.

The justices rejected assertions by the employer that the law protects only actual victims against retaliation. The court noted that state statutes specifically prohibit interference with official civil rights investigations.

“Nowhere in our society is the need greater than in protecting well-motivated employees who come forward to testify truthfully in an administrative investigation of charges of discrimination based on sexual harassment,” Justice Armand Arabian wrote for the court.

“It is self-evident that few employees would cooperate with such investigations if the price were retaliatory discharge from employment.”

The decision opened the way for witnesses in such cases to recover large emotional distress and punitive damage awards for retaliatory firings. Their potential awards would be much smaller had the court accepted the employer’s contentions that claims for harm could be pursued only in workers’ compensation proceedings.

Thursday’s decision was a victory for Vincent A. Gantt, a former sales manager for Sentry Insurance Co. in Sacramento. Gantt said he was forced out of his job after he sided with a female co-worker who charged a male superior with verbal and physical sexual harassment.

Gantt charged that a company attorney attempted to induce him to give false information or to withhold information during an investigation of the co-worker’s complaint by the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Gantt met with a state investigator and confirmed that the woman had complained to him about being harassed. He later learned that he was being demoted to sales representative and eventually took a job with another firm.

Gantt brought suit charging wrongful termination and in 1986, after a 55-day trial, won a $1.34-million jury verdict against Sentry and some of its officers.

An attorney for Gantt, Michael A. Bishop of Sacramento, praised the high court Thursday for “supporting both the victims and the people who come forward to testify against sexual harassment.”

Anthony Poidmore of Sacramento, another lawyer for Gantt, said he hoped the ruling would deter harassment in the workplace, but said it would still be difficult for witnesses like Gantt.

“He’s been fighting this battle for 10 years and his life has changed dramatically as a result,” Poidmore said. Gantt, 50, teaches in a Sacramento junior high school.

Douglas H. Barton of San Francisco, attorney for Sentry Insurance, said the ruling would be devastating to employers, inviting employees to seek multimillion-dollar damage awards any time they believed they were being pressured to refuse to support a harassment claim.

Barton denied that a company attorney had improperly sought to dissuade Gantt from backing the co-worker’s claim. It was a standard practice for attorneys in such situations to interview witnesses such as Gantt, testing inconsistencies in their stories and advising them when being questioned by investigators not to volunteer information, Barton said.

Steven G. Drapkin of Los Angeles, an attorney for the Merchants & Manufacturers Assn., said the decision was “consistent with the objective of California employers to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace.”

In their decision Thursday, the justices noted that although the law generally allows employers to fire workers at will, there is an exception when employees are terminated for performing an action that public policy would encourage. That public policy must be related to constitutional or statutory law, the court held.

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