Complaint details how talent reviews and promotions allegedly favored younger candidates
A veteran AbbVie employee in Puerto Rico is accusing the company of sidelining her in favor of younger, less experienced colleagues.
Filed on February 2, 2026, in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, the case centers on Marisol Bárzana Santiago, who alleges that AbbVie has repeatedly blocked her advancement because of her age. She brings her claims under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Puerto Rico’s Law No. 100, alleging a pattern of age-based bias in promotions, job reclassification and selection for managerial roles.
According to the court filing, Bárzana has been working for AbbVie Corp. since April 1994, after AbbVie became the successor employer of Abbot Laboratories P.R. Inc. Over more than thirty-one years, she has held several positions: Sales Representative from April 1994 until December 2001; District Sales Manager from December 2001 until October 2015; Product Manager from November 2015 through December 2016; and, from December 2016 to the present, SFE Specialist, then IFT Specialist and now IFT Sr. Specialist, titles that the document says represent the same work with different names. The filing states that she has never been reprimanded and that her performance has never been questioned. It also notes that AbbVie uses a grade system to classify positions.
Bárzana contends that, despite her record, her efforts to secure more advanced roles have been hindered by management and that AbbVie follows what she describes as an “institutional pattern of age discrimination.” The filing alleges that when she applies for managerial positions, the company fails to consider her because she is the oldest and most senior applicant, instead selecting substantially younger, less qualified candidates.
One key episode involves a Senior Analyst Manager position announced in November 2023. The filing states that Bárzana was interviewed by human resources on November 27 but was never interviewed by the hiring manager, Kenneth Bruton. In January 2024, she was notified that the position would not be filled. According to the document, Bruton told her that in January 2024 AbbVie would reclassify her In-Field Team Specialist position from Grade 15 to Grade 16 as IFT Sr. Specialist.
The filing says Bruton did not inform her that she would not receive any salary increase with this reclassification and that she in fact received no salary increase. It further alleges that she was told she would have to wait until the next year’s evaluation to obtain a salary increase, and that the reclassification without a raise also affected her 2024 annual bonus, because the bonus is a percentage of salary. Other employees who were “substantially younger” and also reclassified allegedly received salary increases.
A December 2024 posting for a Marketing Manager position in the Specialty Division is another focal point. According to the filing, on December 20, 2024, Specialty Business Unit Manager Wanda Borges called Bárzana, asked if she was interested in growing within the company, and later in the same conversation asked how much time she had left to retire and requested her résumé.
On January 9, 2025, Borges allegedly told Bárzana, in a meeting at AbbVie’s cafeteria, that she would not be interviewed for the Synthroid Marketing Manager position because she did not appear as a candidate for promotion in AbbVie’s Talent Management Review, an internal process in which senior managerial staff provide input on prospects for promotion, training and selection. The filing states that on January 10, 2025, Customer Excellence announced the selection of Maria de Lourdes Flores as the new Synthroid Marketing Manager. Flores, according to the document, had joined AbbVie in August 2023 as Market Research Manager with experience in consumer companies and was approximately twenty years younger than Bárzana.
The filing then describes three District Manager positions in rheumatology, dermatology and gastroenterology announced on May 13, 2025. Bárzana applied on May 15, 2025, and on June 9, 2025, she was interviewed by human resources and then by three Business Unit Managers in a panel interview. According to the document, before her interview began, the company had already selected Genesis Jaramillo for the dermatology District Manager role and announced her to the Immunology team via Microsoft Teams between 11:00 and 11:30 a.m.; Bárzana’s interview started at 11:30 a.m.
The filing states that Jaramillo was under 40 years of age in January 2025, had never supervised employees in her previous AbbVie positions and told Bárzana that her supervisory experience was at Colgate and that this was her first time supervising a senior team. The other two District Manager positions went to Ángel Pesquera and Sarah Aponte. The document alleges that all three selected employees had less experience, training and education than Bárzana, but were substantially younger.
The filing also recounts that on July 21, 2025, Borges told Bárzana that the company needed people with experience for representative positions and that Jennifer, the Specialty’s Commercial Director, was looking for younger candidates, and notes that a previous Specialty Commercial Director had made a similar comment in a staff meeting.
Alongside AbbVie Corp., ABC Insurance Co., Inc. is named as the alleged insurance carrier for AbbVie for the claims asserted.
Bárzana is asking the court for an order directing AbbVie to stop what she describes as discriminatory conduct on the basis of age and to appoint her to a Grade 16 position or higher with a corresponding salary increase. She also seeks losses in income, liquidated damages equal to her lost income under the ADEA, compensatory damages of not less than $500,000, double compensatory damages under Puerto Rico Law No. 100, reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs, litigation expenses, necessary disbursements and prejudgment interests.
These are allegations contained in a newly filed federal court document. No court has ruled on the merits, and no finding of liability has been made.
