The following is from Wednesday’s edition of the Elkhart Truth.
A jury has awarded a Syracuse, Indiana, man $560,000 after finding that Forest River violated the former employee’s civil rights.
Trevon Hollins filed the lawsuit against the RV maker in 2020. He said he was fired in reaction to reporting a supervisor who had called him by a racial slur in an argument a month earlier.
Lawyers for Forest River said in response that firing Hollins on the grounds of insubordination in May 2019 was not retaliatory. Forest River said there were reports leading up to his termination that he was slacking off while on the job.
The lawsuit went to trial after the court ruled against Forest River’s motion for summary judgment. A judge found that the timing of Hollins’s firing was “suspicious” and that a jury could infer retaliation from the evidence.
U.S. District Judge Jon De-Guilio indicated in his written opinion that a jury could infer that the company’s investigation into Hollins’s discrimination report was a “sham” and that more effort was put into investigating his own work performance in the following weeks. The judge observed that a company’s sudden dissatisfaction with an employee’s job performance can be seen as evidence of retaliation.
A jury could also see evidence that the insubordination claim was just pretext in the ambiguous and inconsistent statements that were given regarding Hollins’s firing, De-Guilio said.
Click here to read the entire report from Jordan Fouts in the Elkhart Truth. Please note that there is a pay wall and a subscription is required.
