Jury Awards $101,500 for Aversion to "Perversion"

A federal jury has found that a former bartender at a Dover, Del., restaurant suffered only minimal psychological injury as a result of the “perverted behavior” of co-workers and supervisors -- but still awarded her $100,000 in punitive damages.

The trial of Shannon Laymon's sexual harassment case featured lurid testimony about the “Animal House”-type debaucheries –- mostly after hours –- at the Lobby House restaurant where she worked for seven months before being fired in March 2006. According to her diary, the owner, Ken Caudill, told her that “the only think [sic] girls are good for is sex.”

“The Lobby House was a place where perverted behavior was commonplace,” plaintiff's lawyer Noel E. Primos argued to the jury. “Where female employees felt free to run around topless and flash their breasts.”

In a Sept. 12 verdict, the jury found the Lobby House liable for creating a sexually hostile work environment and retaliating against Laymon for complaining about it. But the total award of $101,500 includes only $1,500 in compensatory damages for emotional distress and mental anguish.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that “few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process.” In Laymon's case, the ratio is 66:1, leaving the verdict ripe for appellate reversal –- if it even gets past the trial judge.

To win punitive damages, Laymon, 24, had to show that the Lobby House “willfully or wantonly” violated her rights. In court documents, she described a veritable panoply of perversion that included:

Lobby House manager Rick Anibal, who is Caudill's son-in-law, fired Laymon nine days after she complained to him about the work environment.

But the jury's verdict suggests that the defense succeeded, to some extent, in portraying Laymon as a “know-it-all” chronic complainer with an attitude problem. “The business of the Lobby House is fun,” defense attorney Ronald G. Poliquin argued, and Laymon “was miserable to be around in a place that sells fun.”

If the jury believed Laymon, he said, everyone who worked at or patronized the Lobby House "is a perverted sicko."

Laymon acknowledged she had been diagnosed with depression before she started working at the Lobby House. In disputing that the alleged harassment detrimentally affected her, the defense pointed to photographs of her apparently enjoying herself at the New Year's Eve party.

Poliquin told The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., that he would be seeking to have the verdict thrown out. But plaintiff's counsel Primos said, “There were numerous witnesses by both sides, many more by the defendant ... and the jury made its decision.”

UPDATE

U.S. District Judge Mary Pat Thynge reduced Laymon's punitive damages to $25,000, ruling May 1, 2009 that the behavior at the Lobby House was not “sufficiently offensive to warrant an award of $100,000.”