A groundbreaking ruling, high-stakes lawsuits and a noteworthy protest — Insurance Journal’s reporting on the employment practices liability insurance landscape covered a lot of ground in 2023. Below is a selection of the most-viewed EPLI stories that appeared on the IJ website in the past year.
In November, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts upheld a $24 million jury award for a woman who sued her employer for retaliation and discrimination because of her social anxiety disorder.
The employer, PPD Development, had criticized the outcome handed down by a jury in March and in June asked the court to set aside the verdict or reduce the award, which it maintained was excessive and unsupported by the evidence at trial.
But a U.S. district judge rejected PPD’s requests and defended the jury verdict and the multi-million-dollar award for the former PPD employee. Judge Leo T. Sorokin called the findings and conclusions of the jury “unassailable” in dismissing the call for a new trial.
A groundbreaking legal ruling in January found shareholders can sue McDonald Corp’s former global chief people officer for the damage they claim he caused to the restaurant chain by allegedly allowing a culture of sexual harassment to flourish.
The decision marked the first time the Delaware Court of Chancery recognized that corporate officers owe the company a legal duty of oversight, which has traditionally been an obligation solely of directors. The decision allowed McDonald’s shareholders to proceed to trial to try to prove that David Fairhurst, global chief people officer from 2015 to 2019, breached his oversight duties by allegedly acting in bad faith and ignoring signs of a toxic culture.
In June, a few hundred Amazon.com Inc. employees at the company’s Seattle headquarters walked off the job to protest the company’s return-to-work policies, impact on the climate and deepest-ever round of layoffs. The protest encapsulated 2023’s national conversations regarding remote work, ESG and layoffs.
A December story shared details of a lawsuit accusing Citigroup Inc. of tolerating years of sexual harassment and assault. The suit was filed by Ardith Lindsey, a managing director of the firm’s North American electronic sales trading and execution advisory services.
A handful of X stories related to EPLI were published on the IJ website this year, but none drew more attention than one sharing details from a lawsuit alleging that Twitter Inc. refused to engage in arbitration with ex-employees who were fired when Elon Musk took over the company after pushing them to use that process to resolve claims.
Go Deeper
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