Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—1st Cir.: $24 million verdict upheld in favor of employee who had social anxiety, (Jul 25, 2025)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

After the employee requested accommodations, an HR employee emailed the HR executive director, mentioning “delicately working” the employee out of her position.

Affirming a district court’s dismissal of an employer’s motions for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, and remittitur, the First Circuit determined that the employer failed to avail itself of opportunities to articulate its Rule 50(a) motion for judgment as a matter of law prior to the case going to the jury and could not use a subsequent Rule 50(b) motion to flesh out these grounds. In addition, the employer did not object to additional language added to jury instructions after it had been apprised of the proposed modification. Finally, the court found that a reasonable jury could have viewed the evidence in a manner supporting its punitive damage award (Menninger v. PPD Development, L.P., No. 23-2030 (1st Cir. July 24, 2025)).

The employer is a clinical research organization. The employee who brought this suit was its executive director for laboratory operations.

Client focus. In 2017, with its business stagnating, the employer decided to implement a plan focusing on client relationships. To that end, it tasked its operational leads, including the employee, with increasing their involvement with client pitches and other engagements.

Social anxiety. When the employee’s supervisor told her about the planned change, the employe balked, explaining that she suffered from generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic attacks, which she treated with medication as needed. She also explained that increased client interactions would be “difficult in light of [her] disability,” and was open to discussing other ideas for her role.

Accommodations. The employer proposed that the employee have her doctor recommend accommodations that might allow her to perform her new duties. The employee agreed. Among the suggested accommodations was providing a “surrogate or reader” to attend client meetings or to make presentations on the employee’s behalf.

An HR employee stated that it could accommodate a request to have a surrogate present at internal meetings and to reduce the employee’s travel obligations, but that it could not accommodate her other proposed requests.

Working her out. Before the employee was scheduled to meet with the HR employee and her supervisor to request the proposed accommodations, the HR employee emailed the executive director of HR mentioning “delicately working” the employee out of her position and that he and the supervisor “[g]ave only slightly on two out of five items that her physician requested” as reasonable accommodations.

During the meeting, the employee asked for more information about the specific responsibilities for which the employer stated accommodations were not possible. The employer neglected to provide those details, instead requesting that the employee either transition to a temporary consulting role or take an exit package.

When the employee refused these options, the HR employee coached the employee’s supervisor on documenting criticisms of the employee to his manager file and instructed him to modify the employee’s goals for 2018. The employee found the subsequent criticisms to be unfounded and the modified goals as impossible standards designed to set her up for failure. As a result, she suffered from major depressive disorder, causing her to go on medical leave. With her leave exhausted, she was still medically unable to return to work, ultimately leading the employer to terminate her employment.

Lawsuit. Subsequently, the employee sued the employer for disability discrimination and retaliation under both state and federal law. The case proceeded to trial.

At the end of the trial, the jury found in favor of the employee, awarding her more than $24 million in damages, including $10 million in punitive damages. The employer moved for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, and remittitur. The district court denied those motions and this appeal followed.

Rule 50(a). First, the employer argued that the employee’s disability-discrimination claims were insufficient as a matter of law and should never have gone to a jury. Here, the court observed that the employer’s entire Rule 50(a) motion consisted of an exchange with the district court judge wherein it was asked whether it had any motions it wished to make before the case was sent to the jury. The employer responded that it wished to move for a directed verdict. The judge denied the motion and asked if there was anything else. The employer did not indicate that there was.

This exchange, explained the court, was not necessarily the employer’s last chance to put forward, under Rule 50(a), reasons for granting judgment as a matter of law. Ordinarily, a party may supplement an initial oral Rule 50(a) motion with subsequent oral or written statements of the basis for that motion, so long as it does so before the case is sent to the jury.

During the full day that passed before the matter went before the jury, the trial judge met repeatedly with counsel. At no point during these discussions did the employer attempt to explain the basis of its Rule 50(a) motion, ask the court to reconsider its denial, or to supplement its cursory oral request with a concise written version identifying one or more grounds for granting its request.

Rule 50(b). It was only after the jury verdict that the employer, in a Rule 50(b) motion, explained why it contended that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support the verdict on some counts. However, because the employer entirely failed to identify the grounds for its Rule 50(a) motion, let alone “the law and facts that entitle[d it] to the judgment,” it had no arguments to renew at the Rule 50(b) stage, said the appellate court. The court here rejected the employer’s argument that the district court prevented it from articulating the grounds for its initial motion by “immediately and summarily” dismissing the motion.

In this instance, the district court practically invited the employer to make a Rule 50(a) motion based on its perception that had it not done so, it would not have made any such motion at all, observed the appellate court. Accordingly, the appellate court declined to consider on the merits the employer’s unpreserved sufficiency-of-the-evidence arguments.

Jury instructions. Next, the employer contended that an improper jury instruction tainted the verdict, thus warranting a new trial. Specifically, it took issue with the court’s instruction that a reasonable accommodation “might include,” among other things, “the provision of qualified readers or interpreters.” The employer acknowledged that the quoted language came directly from the ADA’s definition of reasonable accommodation, but that the instruction was misleading in the context of the case because it indicated that the requested accommodation was presumptively reasonable. This was a problem, argued the employer, because the statutory language about readers applies only to vision-impaired employees.

Here, the court found that it need not tackle the full merits of this argument as the employer had once again failed to preserve its objection. The employer had raised a concern with the proposed “reader” instruction during the charge conference. When the district court pointed out that the listed accommodations were merely examples and not per se reasonable in any given case, the employer suggested adding “interpreter” to give further context to the jury and the court agreed to do so. The employer raised no further objections to the instruction nor did it indicate in any way that it continued to take issue with the instruction as modified and supplemented by its own suggestion.

By failing to object to the modified instruction, the employer deprived the district court of the opportunity to cure the alleged defect, said the court, concluding that there was no plain error on the part of the district court with regard to the jury instructions.

Punitive damages. Finally, the employer sought to overturn the jury’s award for $10 million in punitive damages, arguing the employee failed to show that it had acted with malice or reckless indifference. The district court had rejected this challenge, finding that a reasonable jury could have viewed the evidence in a manner supporting the award. The appellate court agreed.

At the outset, the court here noted that there was no evidence of malice in the employer’s decision to increase the employee’s public-facing responsibilities before learning of her disability. The problems arose when an HR employee suggested “delicately working” the employee out of her position.

Although an employer does not necessarily act with malice when it attempts to illegally terminate an employee, for example if an employer believed it had no legal duty to further accommodate an employee’s disability because they could no longer perform their job’s essential functions, then such a failure to accommodate would not be malicious. However, the jury had reason to doubt whether the employer believed this to be the case.

At trial, the executive director of HR testified that the HR employee had not informed her of his efforts to seek an exit strategy, and his reference to “delicately working” the employee out could have referred to the fact that the employee was working remotely. In light of this “puzzling” testimony, the jury might reasonably have concluded that the employer did not, in fact, believe that it could terminate the employee in light of her second request for accommodations, observed the court.

In weighing this and other evidence, the court noted that the jury was by no means required to draw the inferences that it did. However, the inferences that it did choose to draw were not beyond the realm of possibility. Accordingly, the court declined to strike the jury’s punitive damages award and the findings of the district court with regard to the post-trial motions were affirmed.

The case is No. 23-2030.

Judge: Kayatta, W., Jr.

Attorneys: Patrick J. Hannon (Hartley Michon Robb Hannon) for Lisa Menninger. Catherine Brackett (Ogletree Deakins) for PPD Development, L.P.

Companies: PPD Development, L.P.

MainStory: TopStory Discrimination DisabilityDiscrimination Discharge Procedure RemediesDamages MaineNews MassachusettsNews NewHampshireNews PuertoRicoNews RhodeIslandNews GCNNews