Update: This story has been updated to reflect the judge’s order reducing the jury award.
A federal jury in Dallas awarded $2.17 million Wednesday to a former SkyWest Airlines employee who said she was subjected to constant crude and demeaning sexual harassment by her co-workers at DFW International Airport.
However, Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater, before whom the case was heard, promptly reduced the award to $300,000, the maximum allowed under federal law for companies of SkyWest’s size, those with more than 500 employees.
The jury’s verdict — $2 million in punitive damages and $170,000 in compensatory damages — was returned on the second day of deliberations in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Sarah Budd, a former clerk in SkyWest’s parts and maintenance department at DFW.
Budd testified at trial that from the day she showed up for work at DFW in August of 2019 — after about a dozen years with SkyWest in Utah — she was subjected to harassment that made her feel unsafe. For most of her brief tenure at DFW, according to testimony, she was the only young woman in her department, working with about 20 male mechanics.
On her first day on the job, she said, one colleague asked her if she “liked whips and chains and leathers,” adding that if she did, she “would get along well here.” In the following months, Budd testified, she endured an onslaught of jokes about rape, oral sex and anal sex; comments about her breasts and her preferred sexual positions; SkyWest mechanics looking at and sharing nude photos of women on their cellphones; references to women as “bitches;” and far more.
“They didn’t seem to care if I was uncomfortable,” she told the jury.
“In fact, it only spurred them on more. … It’s like they enjoyed my discomfort.”
Judge Fitzwater’s judgment reduced the jury’s verdict to $130,000 in punitive damages and $170,000 in compensatory damages, in keeping with federal damage caps that have been in place since 1991.
By law, parties and judges in discrimination suits are not permitted to mention the damage caps to juries, out of concern that this knowledge could influence a jury’s verdict: If jurors know the maximum that a defendant will have to pay is X, as one lawyer familiar with discrimination cases explained to The Texas Lawbook, the tendencies of juries might be to negotiate downward from that ceiling.
Chad Shultz of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani in Atlanta, one of SkyWests’s lawyers in the case, said: “We appreciate the jury’s service, and respect their opinion, but disagree with their conclusion. We plan to appeal this decision as Ms. Budd was not harassed, and the jury agreed that SkyWest did not retaliate against her” for complaining to supervisors about her workplace environment.
Shultz said Judge Fitzwater “has welcomed post-judgment motions, which we will be filing.”
In addition to Shultz, SkyWest is represented by Liz Drumm of Fisher Phillips in Dallas.
The EEOC is represented by, among others, Alexa Rae Lang and Brooke López of the agency’s Dallas office. Budd, as an intervenor plaintiff, is represented by Edith Thomas of Zipin, Amster, & Greenberg of Silver Spring, Maryland.
“Sarah Budd would like to thank both the EEOC and the jury for allowing her voice to finally be heard, and for sending the message on behalf of her and all women who have been sexually harassed that we cannot be bullied into silence,” Thomas said.
“This case illustrates why the current caps on damages mean that for many companies it is cheaper to litigate than follow the law,” Thomas said.
“Although the jury awarded $2 million in punitive damages, that amount was reduced to $130,000 because of a combined cap on compensatory damages and punitive damages. Allowing an employee to suffer horrendous sexual harassment should not just be a cost of business, but with caps that were implemented in the 1990s, the sad reality is punitive damages are no longer the deterrent they were intended to be.“
Robert A. Canino, regional attorney for the Dallas district office of the EEOC, said: “The airline’s excuses for an unmotivated investigation and the lack of training is contrary to the concept of conscientious accountability or commitment to prevention. Punitive damages like those awarded in this case are not just a penalty for immediate events but are also aimed at encouraging employers to do better. With its verdict, the jury has said to SkyWest that they should be proactive in the future, rather than passive or dismissive when it comes to protecting woman at work.”
SkyWest is a regional carrier that principally provides flights between smaller airports and large hubs for American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines.
Budd, often sobbing on the stand, testified that when she initially complained on Sept. 4, 2019, to her supervisor — who lived in Oklahoma City and whom she’d never previously met — he seemed more annoyed at her complaint than interested in resolving it, telling her that if he did anything, it would only make matters worse for her because there would be “a target on my back. … He didn’t do anything.”
In a deposition, the supervisor, Dustin Widmer, gave a different account of that meeting, saying it was Budd — not he — who suggested that Widmer not pursue the matter, out of fear that it would put a target on Budd’s back.
The EEOC, after receiving a complaint from Budd, sued SkyWest in August 2022.
In closing arguments Tuesday, López said what happened to Budd was “not just disgusting. It’s frightening.”
Budd, she added, “worked in a horrific environment, and SkyWest knew it.”
Shultz said in his closing argument that Budd’s original complaint to Widmer about the SkyWest workplace was vague and ambiguous and never specifically mentioned sexual harassment. Shultz said Budd’s account of events grew more detailed and more graphic with time, up to and even during trial, suggesting that she was embellishing matters.
“This just doesn’t add up,” he told the jurors.
Budd took an unpaid medical leave of absence from SkyWest in October 2019 and resigned in May 2020, according to court documents.
The case number is 3:22-cv-01807.