Wal-Mart found guilty of female pay discrimination in Massachusetts Supreme Court

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Local woman beats Wal-Mart
By Conor Berry
The Berkshire Eagle

Oct. 06 2009
PITTSFIELD -- It's not every day that someone takes on a corporate giant and wins. But Cynthia Haddad, of Pittsfield, took on Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, in a gender discrimination lawsuit and won.
The Mountain Road resident and former Pittsfield Walmart pharmacist will be awarded at least $2 million in damages after the state's high court on Monday upheld an earlier jury award that was partially rescinded by a judge. The overall $2 million award is expected to rise once interest and other costs are calculated, according to Haddad's attorneys.
"It's an endorsement of professional female employees and the assurance that they will be paid equal to their male counterparts," said attorney Richard Fradette, a member of Haddad's legal team.
Haddad, through her husband, William Haddad, declined to comment on Monday.
But her legal team had plenty to say about the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinion, which upheld a June 2007 Berkshire Superior Court ruling that awarded Haddad $1 million for compensatory damages and another $1 million for punitive damages after Haddad claimed she was fired for demanding the same compensation as her male colleagues.
Haddad and her family were overjoyed and relieved after the original 2007 Superior Court ruling. But those feelings were soon supplanted by frustration and disappointment after Superior Court Judge John A. Agostini later revoked the $1 million award for punitive damages, finding there was an insufficient basis for the jury's decision.
Monday's unanimous decision by the SJC restored the punitive damages and upheld the total $2 million.
Fradette, who is also a pharmacist, added: "From a pharmacist's perspective, it's reassuring that the professional employee can, in fact, win a fight -- even with a company as big as Wal-Mart."
Michelle Bradford, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said the company is disappointed by the ruling.
"Wal-Mart has strong equal employment opportunity policies, and we foster female leadership," Bradford said.
Fradette and co-counsel David Belfort praised Haddad and her husband for "sticking with it." The attorneys were assisted by Robert S. Mantell, who handled the appeal.
Cynthia Haddad was fired in 2004 after working at Walmart for more than 10 years, seven of them at the Pittsfield store. The company claimed she was fired because she left the pharmacy unattended and allowed a technician to use her computer security code to issue prescriptions in her absence.
Haddad and her legal team said that charge was a trumped-up excuse, and that the fraudulent prescription had been filled 18 months earlier, without Haddad's knowledge.
They said Haddad was really fired because she demanded to be paid as well as her male counterparts, including a bonus given to pharmacy managers. The company paid the bonus, then fired her two weeks later.
The $2 million Superior Court award marked "the largest employment discrimination verdict" in Massachusetts in 2007, according to Belfort.
"I think that the Supreme Judicial Court confirmed that outrageous gender discrimination may be punished by a jury," Belfort said. "More broadly, this is hopefully going to encourage women to have the fortitude to speak out if they are discriminated against based on who they are."
Belfort and Fradette praised Agostini, the original trial attorney, for his fairness and mannerly demeanor, but they wholeheartedly disagreed with his decision to vacate the punitive damages portion of the lawsuit.
The SJC decision, which was released around 11 a.m. Monday, ruled that the Superior Court jury had enough evidence to find that Wal-Mart's stated motive for Haddad's firing was a pretext, and that the company acted with a "discriminatory animus."
"There was evidence that Wal-Mart paid the plaintiff substantially less than less-experienced male pharmacists, refused to pay the plaintiff the pharmacy manager salary differential that it paid to male pharmacists, and terminated the plaintiff purportedly for a single policy violation but did not terminate male pharmacists for that or for more serious infractions involving violations of State and Federal law," Justice Judith Cowin wrote for the court in the unanimous, 7-0 ruling.