The former legal chief for Farmers Insurance was awarded $150 million in punitive damages Thursday in a wrongful termination lawsuit claiming that he was wrongly blamed for a sex-bias suit filed by female attorneys.
The punitive award for Andrew Rudnicki is in addition to $5.4 million that he was already awarded by California jurors, Law360 reports.
A press release by Rudnicki’s lawyers, Shegerian & Associates, summed up Rudnicki’s allegations this way: “Fearful that his testimony would have shed light on inaction by Farmers, Farmers retaliated against Rudnicki and shamefully used him as a scapegoat in order to hide their own failure to address concerns Rudnicki raised” on behalf of the eventual plaintiffs.
