Court overturns $8M jury award to Hanford employee for discrimination, retaliation

The jury verdict that awarded a former Hanford manager $8.1 million for discrimination, retaliation and wrongful firing has been overturned in a split decision on appeal.

The ruling was filed Tuesday, July 14, by a three-judge panel of the Washington state Court of Appeals Division III.

A Benton County Superior Court jury found for Julie Atwood, a former manager at Mission Support Alliance, in an October 2017 verdict.

She sued Mission Support Alliance, a Department of Energy contractor at the Hanford nuclear reservation, and Steve Young, saying that as her supervisor at the Hanford site he had aided and abetted in the discrimination and retaliation against her.

Young, who had cancer and died in May 2019, also served as the Kennewick mayor when he was Atwood’s boss.

“We believe the Court (of Appeals) made the correct decision,” said Bob Wilkinson, Mission Support Alliance president, said Tuesday when the new ruling was released.

Atwood’s attorney Jack Sheridan of Seattle said Atwood plans to appeal the decision to the Washington state Supreme Court.

“We are disappointed that the Court of Appeals second guessed the jury’s verdict after a four-week trial,” Sheridan said. “In its opinion it appears the court gave no deference to the jury’s verdict as required by law, but gave significant deference to MSA’s view of the evidence.”

Retaliation claim

Two of the appeals court judges said that Judge Doug Federspiel, who was temporarily assigned to Benton County from Yakima County, improperly allowed evidence to be admitted about disciplinary action taken by Mission Support Alliance against other employees.

In the other incidents used for comparison, MSA employees were disciplined but not fired.

Atwood said she was forced out of her job when she told MSA investigators they should be looking into the actions of her boss, Young, as they were interviewing her about an anonymous complaint filed against her.

The complaint against Atwood said she was contributing to a hostile work environment both through alleged time card violation and because they perceived she received special treatment from MSA because of her good relationship with a DOE official overseeing MSA.

Atwood believed her comments were confidential when she told investigators that Young, then the mayor of Kennewick, was conducting business for the city on hours he was supposed to be working for the Hanford contractor and getting paid with federal tax dollars.

The investigation cleared Atwood of wrongdoing, but she was told she was being fired anyway. She resigned instead, hoping to save her pension and professional reputation, said her attorney.

MSA attorneys argued that she was told she was being fired because she repeatedly disregarded Young’s policy that his employees had to be on-site, on time and locatable. They said the issue was exacerbated when Atwood took a sudden, short trip overseas, sending a message from the airport that she was leaving town but planned to work while she away.

Court error

Two of the appeals court judges, Laurel Siddoway and Kevin Korsmo, concluded that the jury was influenced by evidence of MSA’s treatment of other employees, even though their situations were substantially different from Atwood’s.

“Not only was the evidence not relevant, but it had a clear capacity to confuse the issues and mislead the jury,” the appeal’s court decision said.

In one case a truck driver said a high-ranking MSA manager retaliated against him when he told the manager to stop flirting with and attempting to contact the truck driver’s wife. The manager was accused of inappropriately touching the employee’s wife at a bar.

The manager was removed from his position, according to court documents.

In another incident a union member failed to report to work or failed to call in when he would be late. The union worker was sent a letter saying further violations of policy would result in him losing his job.

In another incident a man was given a two-week suspension for making ongoing negative and demeaning comments that affected relationships with DOE and other MSA employees.

Atwood was hired “at will” and there was no requirement that she be given warnings before she was fired, the appeals court said.

Sheridan had argued that when an employer precipitously terminates an employee rather than imposing progressive discipline, such as giving warnings, it’s likely that the firing was retaliatory.

Judge dissents

The dissenting opinion in the case, filed by Judge Robert Lawrence-Berrey, said he agreed that a new trial was needed.

But the trial court’s errors did not affect the jury’s verdict on retaliation and wrongful discharge and those should be upheld, he said.

The disparate treatment of male employees only was used as evidence on her third claim, for gender discrimination, and the jury’s verdict on that should be reversed, Lawrence-Berrey said.

Sheridan said in closing arguments “For comparator sake, let’s look at men that we know did something wrong and see how they were treated . ... none of these men are terminated. That’s our case. That’s our discrimination case.”

Mission Support Alliance provides service across Hanford for DOE, including utilities, information technology and road services. Atwood was a project manager in the contractor’s Portfolio Management Division, helping DOE integrate work performed by DOE’s many contractors across Hanford.

The federal government spends about $2.5 billion a year on environmental cleanup of Hanford. The site is contaminated from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.