Objectives on your resume can be detrimental to your job search. This objective can eliminate you from consideration immediately because the position may not be challenging and the company may not be growing.

In the largest verdict to an individual employment plaintiff in United States history, a California jury has awarded $167.7 million to a cardiac surgery physician assistant who suffered sexual harassment and wrongful termination. Of the total verdict, $125 million was for punitive damages. The jury reached the verdict on February 29, 2012.

Plaintiff Ani Chopourian worked for two years at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, Calif. She experienced harassment that included sexual advances, vulgarity, inappropriate touching and trash talk on a daily basis, said her attorney, Lawrance Bohm, a sole practitioner at the Bohm Law Group in Sacramento. Chopourian’s repeated complaints – which also included details about patient safety problems and meal and rest break violations – went ignored and she was terminated in 2008. “Being harassed in a normal work environment is bad enough, but being sexually harassed, demeaned, and belittled while people’s lives hang in the balance is truly unbelievable,” said Bohm. To make things worse, the hospital blackballed Chopourian after she filed suit, he said, and she has been unable to find work as a result. A call seeking comment from Julie Clark Martin of LaFollette Johnson in Sacramento, who represented the hospital, was not returned; the hospital also declined to respond to a request for comment on the case.

‘Nightmare’ work environment
 Chopourian, a Yale-educated physician assistant, worked in Mercy General’s cardiovascular operation department from 2006 to 2008. She assisted surgeons during open heart surgery in positioning the heart, harvesting veins or arteries and retracting the sternum, among other responsibilities. But from the beginning, Chopourian experienced a “nightmare” of a work environment, Bohm said. Both in and out of the operating room, she was subject to verbal and physical sexual harassment that went unchecked by hospital management, he said. Over a two-year period, Chopourian made a total of 18 written complaints, along with numerous other verbal reports. Her final complaint, delivered via certified mail, was stamped “received” on July 31, 2008. She was terminated on Aug. 7, 2008.

Under California law, any negative employment action is presumed retaliatory if it is made within 120 days of a complaint, Bohm noted. Chopourian was allegedly terminated for failing to show up for on-call rounds. But at trial, Bohm produced the original schedule for the week, which did not indicate that she was on call on the day in question. The defense submitted a photocopied version of the schedule that showed Chopourian was supposed to be on duty, but no one could verify when that version was created, Bohm said.

 The three week trial included a total of 25 witnesses for both sides. Chopourian testified about repeated crude sexual advances and obscene facial gestures, as well as a surgeon who complained about his lack of sex with his wife. Another surgeon spoke about his fondness for prostitutes while another made frequent, inappropriate references to women’s breasts. One doctor commonly even greeted others in the surgery suite by announcing, “I’m horny.”

Patient safety claims
But while the sexual harassment Chopourian experienced was severe, “this was also a huge safety whistleblower case,” Bohm said. “It’s not bad enough to come into work and get your butt slapped, get sexually propositioned and suffer rude and crude behavior, but surgeons were also endangering the lives of patients,” he charged. Chopourian reported instances of a surgeon unnecessary breaking patients’ ribs as well as being berated and ordered to stand in the corner for hours during surgery – a real danger to a patient on the table, Bohm said.

In addition, the plaintiff recounted for the jury a multitude of instances where she informed a doctor that she couldn’t harvest a particular patient’s veins because they were compromised or of poor quality, and the surgeon responded that she was a “stupid chick” and ordered her to take the vein, Bohm said. When it subsequently proved to be unusable, the surgeon would berate Chopourian for her incompetence and then instruct her to harvest in the other location she had suggested in the first place.

Bohm flew in two former Mercy General nurses – one currently living in Canada, the other in New Jersey – who testified in support of his client. The Canadian nurse told a story about how the same surgeon Chopourian said called her a “stupid chick” had hidden a sponge behind a patient’s heart during surgery.

She was on the verge of calling a radiologist to help find the sponge when the doctor pulled it out and threw it across the table at her, Bohm said. The defense argued that Chopourian was terminated because she was not a “team player,” citing failing to report for her on-call shift and napping in the break room. The defense also denied that any sexual harassment took place, citing its “zero tolerance” policy, Bohm said. But the hospital undermined its credibility, he said, by telling the jury at the beginning of the trial that they would not hear any salacious stories and that some surgeons would come to testify. Neither of these assertions turned out to be true.

Chopourian has had difficulty finding work because after she gave a deposition in her case and named names, Mercy General claimed that she had violated privacy laws by sharing information about patients and doctors, Bohm said. That allegation cost her the one job she has held since 2008, and since then, “she has not had even a job interview,” he said.

After deliberating for three and half days, the jury found for Chopourian on all seven of her legal theories: sexual harassment, Title VII retaliation, wrongful termination in violation of public policy, retaliation for reports regarding patient safety, intentional interference with economic advantage, defamation and violation of meal and rest break requirements. They awarded $39 million, with an additional $3.7 million in economic damages.

Bohm suggested a punitive award of $100 million to “have the hospital take notice.” But the jury went even further, awarding Chopourian $125 million in punitives. According to Bohm, one juror told him after the trial, “the pain of staying the same must be greater than the pain of change and then you will change.” He expects the trial court will consider reducing the compensatory verdict.

Plaintiff’s attorneys: Lawrance A. Bohm of the Bohm Law Group in Sacramento, Calif.; Erika M. Gaspar of the Law Office of Erika M. Gaspar in Sacramento. Calif.; Gregory R. Davenport of the Law Office of Gregory R. Davenport in Stockton, Calif.

Source: Harris, Dowell, Fisher, & Harris, L.C. – Management Labor and Employment Law Firm, St. Louis, MO