Pregnant woman, not the symphony conductor in story. Photo via Pixabay
A symphony conductor’s attorney is lashing out at a judge for overturning part of a jury’s award in a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit despite jurors’ “undisputed findings” in a two-week trial.
The conductor alleged that after she became pregnant, she was fired from a national touring company’s orchestra performances that were to accompany visual effect presentations of a video game.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephanie Bowick didn’t agree with part of the jury’s findings, ruling that the award of $378,000 to compensate Eimear Noone for her past and future emotional distress suffered due to pregnancy discrimination and wrongful termination was either the result of passion or prejudice by the jury, or was not supported by the evidence, according to plaintiff’s attorney Mia Munro.
Those issues could be retried under the judge’s ruling.
“The judge has essentially held that Ms. Noone could not have suffered more than $25,000 in emotional distress damages, despite the verdict from 12 jurors after deliberating and hearing the evidence for over two weeks, despite there being no standard under the law for assessing emotional distress damages, despite an abundance of very moving testimony about Ms. Noone’s emotional distress, and despite the jury’s undisputed findings that the defendant did fire her shortly before she was to give birth because she was pregnant and because she requested a reasonable accommodation,” Munro said.
She said the jury’s work on the case against Jason Michael Paul Productions ended up partly for naught.
“In her order, the judge took away the jury’s awards for future economic damages, emotional distress damages and penalty for intentional failure to pay all wages owed, after the jury sat through over two weeks of trial hearing the evidence on those issues, deliberated on the issues, and rendered specific verdicts on each of those,” Munro said.
Munro said defense attorney Brett Bitzer, on behalf of Jason Michael Paul Productions, maintained the damages were excessive, but he did not challenge the jury’s liability findings.
“The defendant did not seek a new trial on the issues of liability, recognizing that the verdicts on liability were supported by ample evidence, but rather moved for a new trial just to re-try the issues of damages,” Munro said. “The court partially granted and partially denied the defendant’s motion.”
In July, the jury awarded Noone $647,000 in compensatory damages and found that the company acted with malice, oppression or fraud, triggering a second phase of trial in which the panel awarded an additional $120,000.
Noone maintained she was fired in the summer of 2013 after complaining to Paul that she was mistreated after she became pregnant for the second time while working for him as the conductor in the symphony production of “The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses.” She filed her lawsuit in July 2015.
Bitzer, on behalf of JMPP, said that Noone was fired because she had joined others to form a competing symphony.
Noone’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. She said that during her second pregnancy, she asked the show’s producers if they could shorten their unscripted comments or let her sit on a stool during their routine practice of addressing audiences during performances.
According to Noone, they did not grant her requests during two shows in June and July 2013, even though she made multiple inquiries about such accommodations. She gave birth later that year to a son.
Noone, 38, began working in 2011 on “Zelda,” which featured visual effects of the popular video game with accompaniment by an orchestra. The production was booked in concert halls nationwide and in some international sites.
— City News Service
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