Judge Throws Out $89.5-Million Bias Judgment Against Hughes : Courts: Jurist says ‘runaway verdicts’ must be reversed if jury system is to survive. Plaintiffs’ lawyer vows appeal.
A huge racial-bias judgment, in which a jury found that Hughes Aircraft Co. discriminated against two former employees and ordered the aerospace giant to pay them $89.5 million in damages, was thrown out Thursday by the judge who presided over the trial.
The award, made in October, is “so unsupported by the evidence it shocks the conscience of this court to the point where the court cannot countenance such a result,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Malcolm H. Mackey wrote in his decision.
He added that “if the jury system is to survive, runaway verdicts such as this have to be reversed.”
The case was brought by engineer Jeffrey Lane, 39, who claimed he was denied promotions and pay raises because he is black, and by his former supervisor, David Villalpando, a 36-year-old Latino who backed up Lane’s allegations. Both live in Los Angeles.
Their lawyer, Ian Herzog, called Mackey’s decision “an outrageous miscarriage of justice” and said he will appeal. The judge also gave both sides the opportunity to seek a new trial if desired.
Hughes, a Los Angeles-based unit of General Motors Corp., had no immediate comment on the decision.
Most of the judgment against the firm had come in punitive damages, in which the jury awarded $40 million each to Lane and Villalpando. It was considered one of the largest such awards ever made in a discrimination case involving individual plaintiffs.
Both Lane, who worked for Hughes from 1977 through 1992, and Villalpando claimed that Lane was denied a promotion he was to receive because he lodged internal complaints with the company about racial discrimination.
During the eight-week trial, Villalpando testified that he was pressured by Hughes management to give Lane negative performance grades, but that when he instead came to Lane’s defense, he was eventually pushed out of his job.
Hughes asserted that race played no part in Lane’s treatment, saying he “had not shown the leadership or put forth the extra effort to merit being promoted.” The company denied that it discriminates against its employees.
