Mark P. Velez

Velez won $4.75 million for insurance agent Barbara Anderton last fall when a Sacramento County jury found her employer was liable for workplace bias and age discrimination after firing her in favor of a much younger male. "Typically in these cases, there's no smoking gun, so you have to establish through circumstantial evidence that she was replaced for no legitimate reason," Velez said.

Anderton's son and daughter had both worked for the company as well and had left to take jobs with a rival, so the defense contended that Anderton had walked off the job when questioned about why her offspring had defected.

The plaintiffs caught a break when Velez deposed the company's president and CEO and asked him whether he had investigated Anderton's departure to ensure there had been no discrimination. "He slipped up," Velez said. "He said, 'I spoke to a person involved in the termination.' He realized that he had just undermined the defense that she had walked off the job, but he was on video saying it." Velez played the recording several times for the jury and asked the president, "Were you being truthful?" "There's no right answer to that," Velez said. Anderton v. Bass Underwriters Inc., 34-2013-00149236 (Sacramento Super. Ct., filed Oct. 26, 2013)

"He was caught in a trap, and we amplified that," Velez said. "The jury started siding with us when we showed the company's boys' club culture excluded my client."

Velez said his strategy in a case like Anderton's changes during the trial. "First, you want to survive summary judgment by meeting the factual elements of the claims. Then, when you get before the jury, you need to do more. The jury wants more than just having you meet your burden of proof. And we could do that by impeaching their leadership team and by showing what it was like to be a woman at the company."

For example, when the president visited the San Francisco office, one female agent there testified, he would take the male agents out to dinner and exclude the females. "She said under oath that the president would sit on her desk and order her to make the dinner reservations," Velez said. "The jury could see it was a sexist culture. She said it reminded her of the 1950s."

In a sense, the defense helped. "Their original offer was $75,000," Velez said. "That made it easy to try." The defendants have appealed the big award; the matter is stayed at the 3rd District Court of Appeal during a mediation process. "We hope to correct misbehavior by large companies," Velez said.

— John Roemer