No, No, Novartis: Pay Up

As reported in the WSJ Law Blog (which links to other news reports about this matter), drug maker Novartis has been hit with a verdict of $37 million in compensatory damages and another verdict of $250 million in punitive damages. The company was found guilty of sex discrimination in denying female employees, particularly pregnant employees, the same pay as comparable male employees, opportunities for promotions and more. It’s possible that Novartis could be hit with additional damages. This may be the largest jury verdict ever in an employment case.

There’s great irony here. For a decade, Novartis has been listed by Working Mother magazine among the 100 best companies for working women. The jury in this class action lawsuit disagreed — in a very large way. A couple of incidents during the trial will give you some insight into the jury’s verdict. There was testimony that one manager showed female employees pornographic images and regularly invited them to sit in his lap. Other managers were complained about but no action taken.

One of the lawyers representing Novartis admitted in his opening statement that the company was slow to investigate . He then argued regarding the porno manager: “He wasn’t that bad a manager. He was just terrible with women.” Needless to say, lawyers for the women repeated that statement numerous times during the trial to show that Novartis still didn’t “get it” and needed to be taught a lesson.

Here’s a lesson from the Novartis case: don’t keep managers just because they make their numbers if they treat their employees poorly. They just may be committing — which means the employer will be committing — unlawful discrimination. As I said in a post last week: Fire bad supervisors and managers. Or suffer the consequences — which the Novartis case shows can be mind-boggling.