Earlier this month on our San Diego employment law blog, we had mentioned that a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit filed by a former model from the game show “The Price Is Right,” was being heard by a jury in California. Last week, it was reported that the jury did side with the woman who was fired by the game show after she became pregnant with twins.
As a result of the wrongful termination lawsuit, the former model is expected to recover millions in damages. ABC News reported last week that the jury awarded the woman $7.7 million in punitive damages for her employer’s wrongdoings. However, the woman’s former employer is not satisfied with the result of the trial. FremantleMedia North America reported that it plans to appeal the jury’s verdict.
The game show model’s former employer claims that pregnancy discrimination had nothing to do with ending the woman’s employment with “The Price Is Right.”
FremantleMedia claims that the court prohibited the employer from being able to provide the jury with information about the number of the company’s models that have been pregnant while working, and that this information would have helped to support the employer’s claim that it did not fire the model as a result of pregnancy discrimination.
During the woman’s trial, the jury did hear evidence that the former model had been subjected to offensive comments and discrimination when she became pregnant while working for “The Price Is Right” producers.
According to the former model’s wrongful termination lawsuit, the game show’s producers had stopped calling the model to work on “The Price Is Right” once her pregnancy was visible.
One producer had even called the woman a “wide load” when she was still working on the show. After the woman’s maternity leave ended, she called the show to schedule a time to return to work. However, producers rejected the woman’s request to return to the show after her pregnancy. The former model had worked for “The Price Is Right” for seven years before she was illegally fired.
Source: ABC News, “Former ‘Price Is Right’ Model Awarded $7.7M in Termination Suit,” Jennifer Abbey, Nov. 22, 2012
- Our firm handles a variety of employment law and job rights issues, including complaints about pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. To learn more about employees’ rights, please visit our San Diego employment discrimination page.