Farmers Insurance Attorney’s Retaliation Win Cut by $131 Million

Farmers Insurance Exchange and Farmers Insurance Group convinced a California state court judge to cut from $150 million to $18.9 million a former executive’s punitive damages award for retaliation in his firing for testimony he planned to give in a class pay bias lawsuit by female in-house attorneys.

The California Superior Court for Los Angeles County entered an order giving former senior vice president Andrew Rudnicki the choice of taking the remitted $18.9 million in punitive damages, together with $5.4 million in compensatory damages, or pursuing a new trial. The court separately denied the companies’ motion for judgment notwithstanding the ...