A jury found in favor of Stephen Glick (Glick) and Alfred Garcia (Garcia) (collectively, plaintiffs) on their claims for gender discrimination and retaliation against the City of Los Angeles (City). The jury awarded Glick $8,621,358 in damages and Garcia $4.5 million, and the trial court entered judgment in that amount. The court later conditionally granted the City’s new trial motion unless Glick agreed to a remittitur reducing his damages to $250,000 and Garcia agreed to reduce his damages to $125,000. Plaintiffs rejected the reduced awards. Plaintiffs and the City both appealed.
We reverse the order granting a new trial on damages. The trial court abused its discretion by capping the amount of damages a jury can award for so-called “garden-variety emotional distress.” The court also abused its discretion by erroneously rejecting as inadmissible Glick’s own testimony about his future economic damages. Because the jury’s damages awards were not excessive as a matter of law or unsupported by the evidence, we reinstate the judgment and affirm it.
There are 0 comments