Paul Hammel
LINCOLN — A federal judge has ordered Omaha’s Werner Enterprises to pay a deaf driver $300,000 plus $35,682 in lost wages to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit.
The discrimination case had been filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of driver Victor Robinson, who had applied for a job with Werner in 2016, but then was rejected.
Despite being deaf, Robinson had obtained a “hearing exemption” from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and he graduated from a Werner-owned truck driving school.
Jury award was $36 million
In September, an eight-person jury found that Werner had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because it had failed to hire Robinson and had failed to provide him with reasonable accommodation for his disability.
The jury awarded $36 million in punitive damages and $75,000 in compensatory damages to Robinson.
Federal law, though, limits monetary damages to $300,000 in such employment discrimination cases, and on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Gerrard reduced the damages to that amount and awarded Robinson $35,682 for lost wages.
‘Could not reasonable accommodate’
Werner, in court filings, had argued that it could not reasonably accommodate Robinson’s disability so he could “perform the essential functions of his position.”
On Sunday, a spokeswoman for Werner said the company had no further comment.
In September, Jill Samuelson, Werner’s associate vice president for marketing and communications, had said that the company was considering an appeal.
She added then that Werner operates on the idea that “nothing we do is worth getting hurt or hurting others.”