Appeals Court Overturns Sexual Harassment Verdict

An appellate court has overturned a $116,809 judgment awarded to an Orange County woman who said she was sexually harassed for a year by her supervisor in a Huntington Beach store.

Jacqueline Ann Kaye had alleged that executives at Ever-Ready Lighting Centers, based in Reseda, did nothing to stop her boss’s unwanted advances and then fired her after she complained to the company.

In August, 1990, a Superior Court jury found in Kaye’s favor and ordered Ever-Ready to pay her $1,809 in compensatory damages and $115,000 in punitive damages. The boss who she said harassed her had previously been dropped from the lawsuit because he was bankrupt, lawyers said.

But in a ruling announced Monday, the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana overturned the jury’s award on two points and ordered the case retried.

First, the appellate court found that the trial judge may have misled jurors by instructing them to decide in Kaye’s favor if it was found that the company never told her of her legal rights in a sexual harassment claim. The appellate justices said no law exists to require such notification.

The appellate court also struck down the award on the basis of a recent state Supreme Court ruling that found juries must hear testimony on a defendant’s finances before awarding punitive damages. That was never done in the Kaye case.

Kaye’s attorney, James G. Harker, said: “A lot of cases are getting reversed in light of that case.”

Nonetheless, Harker said, “I’m pleased with (the reversal) because we wanted a new trial as well.”

Harker said the jury appeared “confused” over the types of damages it could award, and he hopes Kaye will receive a larger award for emotional pain and suffering at a new trial.

“This was sexual harassment of the worst kind,” he said.

Kaye was the manager of the Ever-Ready store in Huntington Beach. She testified that for a year before her firing in September, 1985, the district manager frequently harassed her through verbal propositions, touching and threats of retaliatory action.

At one point, the boss approached Kaye and her daughter, then in her 20s, suggesting that he was attracted to them and was interested in pursuing a “mother-daughter relationship” with them sexually, Kaye testified.