Big court award: Tale of the bogus e-mail
August 7, 2008 by Fred HosierPosted in: Dubious decisions, Special Report, Worst manager of the week
A company fired a manager for not following directives from his superiors. The manager said he was protecting the company from a possible lawsuit. In the end, an e-mail spelled trouble for the company. A jury recently sided with the manager, awarding him $46.6 million.
Here’s what happened:
Ronald Luri was a waste collection manager for Republic Services, Inc., in Ohio.
The company wanted him to fire three employees, all of whom were in their early 60s or late 50s.
Luri refused, saying the company could face a lawsuit for age discrimination.
Then Republic fired him for alleged “inadequate performance and failure to follow the directives of this superiors.”
Luri claimed Republic forged records critical of his job performance, including an e-mail.
Evidence tampering key to jury’s decision
In deciding for Luri, the jurors said they were dismayed by testimony of evidence-tampering.
The jurors pointed to an e-mail attributed to Luri’s boss, Republic’s Ohio-area president. Luri’s lawyers called an IT expert who said the president postdated a memo and added two paragraphs that were critical of Luri’s job performance.
Republic’s lawyers said Luri’s allegations were “nothing more than his badly bruised ego.” The company plans to appeal.
“We wanted to send a clear message that this was unjustly done and that they tried to ruin his career,” said the jury foreman.
Another juror said, “Republic was out to get this man.”
The jury decided Luri should get $3.5 million for lost wages as general manager of Republic’s Cleveland division.
The rest of the award — $43.1 million — was in punitive damages, making it the largest verdict in Ohio history by at least $10 million.
What would you do if an employee violated a supervisor’s directives and said he was doing it to protect the company from potential lawsuits? Let us know in the comments section below.
Tags: age discrimination, fire, lawsuit
August 8th, 2008 at 9:44 am
When a company gives you a directive that you are absolutely positive is against the law, then you have a responsibility to inform the company of the reasons it is not in the best interest of the company to follow their directive. I’ve had that happen several times. It is not a good idea to outright refuse to follow a directive. Rather, get your facts together and present them to the powers that be. It is rare that once you present the facts that a company will deliberately choose to shoot themselves in the foot. Why would they? It doesn’t make sense. After years of managing companies, having my own company, and working with the owners of companiesm this story does not ring true. Owners of successful companies did not get where they are by being stupid. I have found that if you have your facts straight, company owners will listen.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I would ask the superior on what grounds do I fire the three employees? What is the justification for it? If the superior had legal grounds and I still disagreed with his reasonong I would let him of the HR department to dismiss them after stating that i could not be part of an act that may get me sued>
August 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I resigned when I was asked to cut payroll checks of $10,000 with no deductions to some independent contractors that I had no idea who they were. I was told to just do it, dont ask questions. I f not to write myself up for insubordination. I wrote my resignation letter instead.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I have been fortunate in my career as a senior Human Resources executive no one was ever terminated prior to consultation with me. Field managers and corporate executives had a comfort level with the arrangement as they knew they weren’t making a decision in a vacuum and potentially placing themselves at risk of being enjoined in a lawsuit. This arrangement worked comfortably in a 5000 employee, six state organization. While there are always hot-head managers this approach required everybody to cool down prior to doing something rash. My best advice to all managers and corporate executives that I counseled wes “Don’t ever do or say anything that you wouldn’t be proud to see on the front page of the local newspaper”; it always put matters into perspective and worked. While some lawsuits are unavoidable in a large organization we typically had them dismissed on motion and only had to actually go to trial once and even that outcome was favorable.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I would tell the boss why I could not follow the directions and ask them to do it themselves if
they felt it was the right thing to do.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I left my last HR Director job because I was told to fire a 45 year old woman so a 24 year old woman could take her place. There were no negative reviews or write ups ever given to the 45 year old. I asked the CEO to put her on a performance plan but don’t fire her. Over the course of the week, I talked to the CEO three times about this. When Friday came, he was adament that it be done. I told him I was giving my two week notice and that I was not going to fire her.
He ended up having he VP of that Branch do it. The employee was actually relieved by the termination because they were making her life a living hell. I was glad to leave an organization that had such disregard for employment law. This CEO was fairly new to the job and was showing that he was the boss.
His predesessor would never have done this and would have listened to me. I can really believe that this happened because I have experienced it myself.
By the way, I received unemployment compensation since the State of Wisconsin felt that this was a constructive discharge.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Whatever you do, put it in writing.
I was fired as a church administrator after I told a church, which wanted to use our facility for a banquet, that they could not use our commercial kitchen as neither of our certified food service managers could be present for their event. I told them they could use the smaller non-commercial kitchen for warming their potluck food. They said fine but the pastor hit the roof. In my meeting with the pastor and the chairman of the personnel committee I showed them why it was against the city’s health code and law to have allowed them access to our commercial kitchen. I was still fired. In hindsight I should have put the problem in writing to the pastor detailing the city food service code and laws; then when he still wanted me to do it I would have documentation to plead my case before the personnel committee or to take the church to court for wrongful termination. Had I allowed its use and someone got food poisoning, our church would have been all over the news and I definitely would have been the fall guy and would have had an even harder time finding new employment. You learn from your mistakes.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Wow. This is something. I work as an Office Manager and Paralegal at a law firm and I can tell you that I wouldn’t do anything that I am not comfortable with nor illegal, no matter what. I would quit my job first. Discrimination is on a rampage, especially for people over the age 45. It is unfortunate that these people are targeted and because of some them lack of education and trainging they are victimized. I think this guy did the right thing. The company apparently knew they were wrong if they were bold enough to change documents (e-mails). There is a question on the settlement amount though. I don’t know if he should have been awarded such an amount but I do agree he should be compensated. What happened to the people he was told to fire?
August 8th, 2008 at 11:19 am
as a lawyer i advised against terminating a 72 year old employee with 40 years of service who was well regarded. he was to be replaced by a young mba although the business unit was astute enough to say his job had been eliminated. so, they ignored the advice (which I widely circulated to senior management) and terminated this employee, paid him 6 months severance and within 30 days they retained the same ex-employee as a consultant for twice what he was making AND HE CONTINUED ON FOR ANOTHER 2 TO 3 YEARS ON THAT BASIS AT TWICE HIS FORMER PAY.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Yes, Company owners will listen, but some choose to be stupid anyway. I’ve had one President ask me to do something that illegal: his directive was to ‘find a way to get rid of all of the old employees over 40 so we can replace them with young tigers.” I remember it well because my 40th birthday had just passed. After reminding him of age discrimination at both state and federal level he replied, “oh, I would not want us to do anything illegal….. but find a way to get it done!” I did accomplish what he asked, but not the way he would have wished. I designed a window pension offer, which was completely legal, providing a monthly income very close to current salary and offered to employees age 40 or more, and most accepted the offer. I gave the President exactly what he wanted. Although I didn’t accept the pension offer - I would have considered it unethical because I was the one who designed and offered it, I left shortly after. The organization later went under, young tigers and all, in my opinion, because there weren’t enough employees knowledgable enough remaining for the organization to remain in business. The expense of paying off 40 year olds and up in order to get rid of them didn’t help.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
I agree with the verdict 100% and with the award amount even though it is HUGE. Asking anyone to break the law FOR you and threatening,and carrying out, a serious consequence (firing) for not doing it is also HUGE. Employers who bully their employees into breaking the law on their behalf need to know that there are consequences for breaking laws and even bigger ones for mandating your employees to break them on their behalf. I think this is the message this court is clearly conveying. Maybe the next (pompous) employer who doesn’t want to abide by laws or thinks the laws don’t apply to them will stop to consider that there could be some serious consequences (not just for the employee who refuses to break laws on their behalf) but also for the employer who demands that they do.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I was placed in the position of doing something that was unlawful or, as the division president put it, being “insubordinate.” I tried to inform this executive that what he ordered me to do was not lawful. He cut me off midway through the sentence and told me that he knew what the law said and that HE was telling me what I would do, that I was to follow his instructions completely and that he was the only one who could make any changes to his instructions, period. He made it abundantly clear that he didn’t care what the law said and that he knew what he was telling me to do was illegal. I tried to get help from our corporate legal department, but, after initially telling me not to worry, that they would protect me and straighten everything out, they called three days later and told me they couldn’t protect me “down the road,” that to not follow his instructions, though illegal, would be an act of insubordination, and that the division president was slotted to become the next corporate president and board chairman, so they weren’t sure what they could do. About a week later, I received a phone call from the corporate VP of HR and he told me I needed to “move on down the road” (yep, that’s exactly what he said) because I couldn’t align myself with current leadership.
I had given my heart and soul to this place and it nearly killed me to lose my job in this manner. My reviews were good, I’m still very good friends with two of the past presidents that I reported to and I’ve always been considered a strong performer / contributor and knowledgeable professional. I had no other means of support and almost lost everything because of respectfully declining to do what this unethical division president wanted me to do. It was a very stressful, confusing, heart-breaking, emotionally and financially devastating experience. So I can attest to the fact that telling the offender that something is wrong doesn’t mean they will listen and do the right thing. A lot of people simply don’t care.
I’m an HR professional with over 20 years of experience and I work hard to protect my employer from potential liability. But I believe any company that doesn’t conduct business in accordance with the law should be penalized in the one way they understand…financially. If more companies were made to pay massive amounts of money when they willfully choose to break the law, maybe fewer people would be in the situation I was in a few years ago. And that would be a very good thing indeed.