Top court keeps punitive damages intact – and it all comes down to one letter the chief wrote
A Massachusetts town just paid $1.4 million for retaliating against its fire chief after he flagged gender bias in his department.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on May 15 upheld a jury verdict against the Town of Marshfield in a retaliation case brought by Kevin C. Robinson, the town's former fire chief. The jury awarded him $300,000 for emotional distress and $1.1 million in punitive damages. The town's attempts to get the verdict tossed, win a new trial, or knock the damages down all failed.
Robinson joined the Marshfield Fire Department in 1978 and became chief in 2003. By the time this dispute started, he had no disciplinary history and a positive 2012 performance review. His niece, Shauna Robinson, was hired in late 2013 along with another woman, Jodi Corrigan, after both topped the civil service exam. Robinson recused himself from his niece's training and filed conflict-of-interest disclosures, as state law requires.
Within weeks, supervisors raised concerns about Shauna's performance. Robinson eventually wrote to the town's board pointing out that male firefighters with similar gaps had been given extra training, coaching, and second chances, while his niece was being shown the door. He named specific examples in his letter.
That letter set off a cascade. According to the court's decision, the town's labor counsel told Robinson at a June 2014 meeting that he should think about retiring before his reputation was damaged. The board declined to renew his contract or grant his contractual salary increase. The town hired outside counsel to investigate him. After the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination told the town that Shauna had filed a gender discrimination complaint – and after town counsel concluded Robinson had helped her file it – he was placed on administrative leave, walked out of the building, and barred from returning. A constable showed up at his house with a notice to explain why he should not be fired. Robinson resigned days later, five years short of mandatory retirement age. The MCAD later found no probable cause on Shauna's underlying claim.
For HR leaders, this is a textbook third-party retaliation case. Robinson was not the person allegedly discriminated against. He was the supervisor who raised it. Under the Massachusetts anti-discrimination statute, a retaliation claim can stand even when the underlying discrimination claim does not – as long as the employee had a reasonable, good-faith belief that something unlawful was happening.
Comparator evidence carried the day. Robinson's letter, listing male firefighters who had received more training and more leeway, was central to the court's analysis. The justices treated it as the kind of record that lets a jury find protected activity and infer retaliatory motive. HR teams running performance management cases should take note: how you have treated similarly situated employees in the past is the evidence that wins or loses these claims.
The decision also doubles as a refresher on pretext versus mixed-motive analysis. Pretext applies in most discrimination and retaliation cases, where the employee uses circumstantial evidence to argue the employer's reason is false. Mixed-motive is the rare case with strong evidence that an illegitimate motive drove the decision. The trial judge blended the two in his instructions, which the Supreme Judicial Court flagged as error. But the court let the verdict stand, in part because the jury had answered the verdict form consistently with a pretext finding, and in part because they had found the town's conduct extreme and outrageous – the standard required for punitive damages.
That last finding is what locked in the $1.1 million. The court pointed to Robinson's decades of clean service and the jury's call that the town's retaliation crossed the outrageous-conduct line.
The decision is final.
