UPS said it fired Michael Gnesda because he falsified a worker's time sheet.
Gnesda, in his wrongful-termination suit, called that a red herring. He was fired, he said, for complaining to higher-ups that customers were being charged too much to ship odd-sized packages.
Last week a Los Angeles County jury accepted Gnesda's version of events, awarding him nearly $21 million--$748,000 in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages.
"The true motivation was a desire to retaliate against Mr. Gnesda," his attorney, David Wiechert, said Friday. "At the end of the trial, the jury found that Gnesda's termination was motivated by his efforts on behalf of customers."
UPS had maintained that Gnesda falsified the time sheet by deducting 1 minute from a subordinate's shift. Company spokeswoman Heather Robinson told the Los Angeles Time that Gnesda made the change to avoid being mentioned in a "report that would reflect poorly" on his oversight of his subordinates' work hours. She declined to elaborate.
She did, however, acknowledge that the amount of time in question was "under 5 minutes." But said the number of minutes wasn't the issue, she added: "It all comes down to honesty and integrity."
Labor attorneys told the Times that the verdict was certain to be appealed. Robinson said only that UPS is considering an appeal.
Gnesda, 44, had worked at UPS for 16 years in Los Angeles and Orange counties before he was fired in 2002, according to the suit. In the early 1990s, he was working in the company's business development office when he uncovered "serious internal problems involving overcharging of customers," the suit alleged.
"These overcharges resulted, and continue to result, in tens of millions of dollars per year to UPS," Gnesda said in his suit.
Gnesda said he lodged an objection with his superiors and helped a customer write a complaint letter to management in 2000. Within a month, Gnesda was transferred out of business development into operations.
"Thereafter, UPS and its senior managers embarked on a pattern of punitive job assignments and sanctions, intended to induce [Gnesda] to quit," the suit said.
According to the suit, these assignments included scheduling Gnesda to work the graveyard shift and to sweep warehouse floors.
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