Passananti sued her former employer, Cook County, claiming that her former manager, Sullivan, subjected her to sexual harassment and that she was fired because of her sex. The jury awarded her a total of $4.1 million in damages: $4 million in compensatory damages against Cook County, and $70,000 in compensatory damages and $30,000 in punitive damages against Sullivan. The district court then granted defendants’ motion for judgment as a matter of law and entered judgment for the defendants.
On appeal, the Seventh Circuit held that the district court erred in granting judgment as a matter of law as to the sexual harassment claim.
The Court held that it was up to the jury to decide context and credibility. Therefore, the jury could reasonably treat the frequent and hostile use of the word “bitch” to be a gender-based epithet that contributed to a sexually hostile work environment. Passananti also presented sufficient evidence to allow the jury to find that the gender-based harassment she suffered was severe and pervasive, and that she did not unreasonably fail to take advantage of available corrective measures in her workplace.
The jury was instructed properly to assess this evidence and to determine whether it believed that Sullivan conducted his campaign against the plaintiff because of her gender. So instructed, the jury determined that Sullivan’s conduct was sex-based and was not neutral. Ample evidence in the record supports its judgment.
In this context, it was error to treat Sullivan’s repeated and hostile use of the word “bitch” as a matter of law as merely a “vulgar, rude, or ungentlemanly” workplace jibe. There was enough on this record for this jury to determine that when Sullivan called the plaintiff a “bitch,” he was attacking her based on her sex.
Read the case here.