Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REMEDIES, DAMAGES—N.D. Ill.: Terminated VA employee not entitled to compensatory damages for emotional distress, (Apr 15, 2025)

By Nicholas Kaster, J.D.

The employee’s testimony did not describe the effects of his dismissal or its aftermath on his emotional state, whether due to financial difficulties or otherwise.

A law enforcement officer terminated by the VA was not entitled to compensatory damages for emotional distress, a federal district court in Illinois has ruled. The employee claimed that he was terminated in retaliation for having filed a claim of race discrimination. The jury found in favor of the employee, concluding that retaliatory animus or motive played a part in his termination and awarded him damages for emotional distress. The court vacated the award, holding that the law does not support an emotional distress award where the fired employee offers no more than limited testimony describing his emotional state (Leonard v. Collins, No. 17 C 09259 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 10, 2025)).

Jury verdict. The African-American employee was fired from his longtime job as a law enforcement officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2013. He claimed he was terminated in retaliation for having filed a claim of race discrimination with the EEOC and sought relief pursuant to Title VII. A jury found in his favor, concluding that retaliatory animus or motive “played a part” in his termination and that he would not have been terminated but for the retaliatory animus. The jury awarded him $100,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress.

At the close of trial evidence, the VA moved for judgment as a matter of law on the employee’s claim for compensatory damages. The VA argued that the employee, whose trial testimony was cut short for medical reasons, presented the jury with no competent evidence to support such an award.

Employee’s testimony. The trial was unusual in that the jury heard almost no live testimony from the employee. On the first day, he began his direct testimony but soon experienced a medical issue that forced him to step down from the witness stand. He was ultimately unable to offer any further testimony at trial. His prior sworn testimony—given in a July 2015 hearing conducted by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and in a May 2019 deposition—was read into the record in lieu of live testimony.

In that earlier testimony, the employee had not described having experienced “mental suffering, humiliation, embarrassment, or pain,” and did not present the jury with any testimony from friends, family members, medical providers, or other witnesses who could attest to any emotional distress or mental harm that he might allege to have experienced. He also acknowledged in his deposition that he never sought any mental health treatment in connection with his removal from the VA.

The employee nevertheless contended that his testimony regarding the circumstances of his termination and its aftermath supported an award of compensatory damages for emotional distress. He claimed that he was dismissed based on misconduct charges he believed were “ludicrous.” Moreover, he contended that the charges against him were investigated by a colleague who allegedly had once threatened to kill him and appeared to have won the employee’s job after he was terminated.

The employee further testified that he did not secure full-time work for about a year and a half, during which time he earned only a small amount of money performing odd jobs at the church where he served as a deacon and that when he did find full-time work as a security guard, his wages started at around $12 per hour and the position did not offer benefits, forcing him on to his wife’s health insurance plan.

Prior testimony did not support award for emotional distress. The court noted that compensatory damages for emotional distress must be “supported by competent evidence.” Emotional distress is “customarily proved by showing the nature and circumstances of the wrong and its effect on the plaintiff.” This requires plaintiffs to show “demonstrable emotional distress,” not just point to circumstances of the violation that “might support an inference of such injury.” Further, when the injured party provides the sole evidence of mental distress, he must reasonably and sufficiently explain the circumstances of his injury and not resort to mere conclusory statements.

An employee is not required to use particular “magic words” to describe his emotional distress in order to recover, the court noted. But the employee’s testimony here did not describe his emotional distress in any terms, and he otherwise offered no testimony from a physician or mental health professional, or even family or friends, to that effect. In other words, said the court, the jury heard no direct evidence of the effect that the VA’s unfair treatment of him had on his emotional state.

Seventh Circuit precedent. The employee pointed out that, in United States v. Balistrieri, 981 F.2d 916 (7th Cir. 1992), the Seventh Circuit stated that courts “must look at both the direct evidence of emotional distress and the circumstances of the act that allegedly caused that distress.” The Balistrieri court further mused that humiliation could be “inherent in the circumstances” of a case, and that the “more inherently degrading or humiliating the defendant’s action is, the more reasonable it is to infer that a person would suffer humiliation or distress from that action.” The employee also noted that, in Seaton v. Sky Realty Co., Inc., 491 F.2d 634 (7th Cir. 1974), the Seventh Circuit wrote that humiliation “can be inferred from the circumstances as well as established by the testimony.”

The court, however, held that the Balistrieri and Seaton cases did not support the employee’s position, particularly when read against the backdrop of other Seventh Circuit cases on the topic. In the court’s view, the two cases do not establish that plaintiffs may sometimes recover emotional distress damages based only on testimony from which a jury might infer emotional distress. Rather, said the court, “an award cannot be supported solely by a perceived likelihood that the plaintiff suffered emotional distress, or solely by the jury’s inference that the plaintiff suffered emotional distress.”

Rather, the court read Balistrieri and Seaton as standing for the proposition that when the defendant engages in conduct as inherently degrading to the victim as race discrimination, “somewhat more conclusory evidence of emotional distress”—for instance, the plaintiff’s own limited testimony as to how the violation made them feel—“will be acceptable to support an award for emotional distress.”

No evidence of race discrimination. The employee here had initially alleged that he had been subjected to race discrimination at the VA. However, at summary judgment, the court concluded that he had presented “no admissible evidence that race discrimination played a role in his removal.” Consequently, the parties stipulated to exclusion at trial of any evidence or argument regarding the employee’s allegations of race discrimination.

The court did not decide whether a retaliatory firing, in and of itself, was as inherently degrading as racial discrimination. The court held only that the law does not support an emotional distress award where the fired employee offers no more than limited testimony describing his emotional state. Here, said the court, the employee’s testimony did not describe his distress even in that limited sense.

In his briefing, the employee implied that the jury heard testimony regarding his financial struggles in the wake of his dismissal from the VA. He was without full-time work for a stretch and performed odd jobs for a small amount of money—but did not identify any specific testimony concerning financial struggles either in the period immediately following his dismissal from the VA or later after he started as a security guard. More importantly, his prior testimony did not describe the effects of his dismissal or its aftermath on his emotional state, whether due to financial difficulties or otherwise.

Accordingly, the court granted the VA’s motion and vacated the jury’s award of compensatory damages to the employee. The court noted that the employee is presumptively entitled to an award for lost pay and benefits. Given the length of time between his dismissal from the VA and the jury’s verdict, the award could potentially be substantial. The court encouraged the parties to discuss the possibility of settlement.

The case is No. 17 C 09259.

Judge: Pallmeyer, R.

Attorneys: Justin Giles Randolph (Randolph & Holloway) for Michael Leonard. Christian Russell Larsen, U.S. Attorney's Office, for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Cases: RemediesDamages Discharge Retaliation RaceDiscrimination Discrimination IllinoisNews