UPS Worker Awarded $238 Million for Retaliation Faces New Trial

Misconduct by counsel for a Black UPS driver so “permeated” his job retaliation trial at which a jury awarded him $237.6 million that a new trial is required, a federal judge ruled.

The misconduct included presenting evidence of untimely discrete acts of race discrimination and harassment that were excluded from use at trial and that counsel for Tahvio Gratton was instructed would require a motion to put before the jury, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Washington said. Counsel “disregarded this instruction” and instead presented the excluded evidence, which included that Gratton had been called “boy” by ...