Today, the California Court of Appeal reversed a blockbuster $13 million judgment that was entered against UCLA in favor of one of its former professors of medicine, Dr. Lauren Pinter-Brown (see our coverage of the February 2018 verdict here).   Dr. Pinter-Brown sued for alleged gender discrimination and unlawful retaliation.  The appellate court determined that the trial judge committed a “series of grave errors” that were “cumulative and highly prejudicial” to UCLA and that evidenced “the trial court’s inability to remain impartial.”

Among other things, the trial judge told the prospective jurors assembled in his courtroom that “the arc of the moral universe is long,” quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, and that “if you are selected as a juror, your job will be to help bend that arc toward justice.”  The judge then proceeded to give what can only be described as a multimedia civics lesson about invidious discrimination through the years in which he showed the jurors a video and made solemn reference to civil rights leaders who had marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in the 1960s as well as Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Atticus Finch, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote and the advent of gay marriage.

As the judge concluded his remarks, he exhorted the prospective jurors:  “[Y]ou as jurors in this case are going to become Dr. King.  It’s going to be your job to help bend that arc toward justice by rendering a verdict based on the law and the evidence that you are going to be hearing in this case.”  Not surprisingly, counsel for UCLA immediately moved for a mistrial based upon the judge’s remarks and requested that a new panel of jurors be assembled. The judge denied the motion and assured the parties that he gives the same presentation before all trials in his courtroom.

After almost three weeks of trial, the jury rendered a verdict of more than $13 million in favor of Dr. Pinter-Brown, consisting of approximately $3 million in past and future lost wages and $10 million in past and future emotional distress damages.  The appellate court reversed the judgment based not only on the trial judge’s prejudicial remarks at the outset of the trial (which the court characterized as a “stirring call to action which stacked the deck against UCLA”) but also in his allowing inappropriate and inapplicable “Me-Too” evidence into the case, which is “never appropriate to prove the employer’s propensity to discriminate.”

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Photo of Tony Oncidi Tony Oncidi

Anthony J. Oncidi is the Co-Chair Emeritus of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law…

Anthony J. Oncidi is the Co-Chair Emeritus of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including litigation and preventive counseling, wage and hour matters, including class actions, wrongful termination, employee discipline, Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, executive employment contract disputes, sexual harassment training and investigations, workplace violence, drug testing and privacy issues, Sarbanes-Oxley claims and employee raiding and trade secret protection. A substantial portion of Tony’s practice involves the defense of employers in large class actions, employment discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration proceedings, including FINRA matters.

Tony is recognized as a leading lawyer by such highly respected publications and organizations as the Los Angeles Daily JournalThe Hollywood Reporter, and Chambers USA, which gives him the highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment.  According to Chambers USA, clients say Tony is “brilliant at what he does… He is even keeled, has a high emotional IQ, is a great legal writer and orator, and never gives up.” Other clients report:  “Tony has an outstanding reputation” and he is “smart, cost effective and appropriately aggressive.” Tony is hailed as “outstanding,” particularly for his “ability to merge top-shelf lawyerly advice with pragmatic business acumen.” He is highly respected in the industry, with other commentators lauding him as a “phenomenal strategist” and “one of the top employment litigators in the country.”

“Tony is the author of the treatise titled Employment Discrimination Depositions (Juris Pub’g 2020; www.jurispub.com), co-author of Proskauer on Privacy (PLI 2020), and, since 1990, has been a regular columnist for the official publication of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Tony has been a featured guest on Fox 11 News and CBS News in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading national media outlets such as The National Law JournalBloomberg News, The New York Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Tony is a frequent speaker on employment law topics for large and small groups of employers and their counsel, including the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), PIHRA, the National CLE Conference, National Business Institute, the Employment Round Table of Southern California (Board Member), the Council on Education in Management, the Institute for Corporate Counsel, the State Bar of California, the California Continuing Education of the Bar Program and the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. He has testified as an expert witness regarding wage and hour issues as well as the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and has served as a faculty member of the National Employment Law Institute. He has served as an arbitrator in an employment discrimination matter.

Tony is an appointed Hearing Examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission Board of Rights and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and a guest lecturer at USC Law School and a guest lecturer at UCLA Law School.