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Compliance December 12, 2002
Independent Contractor Issue Generates $11M Jury Verdict
December 12, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Cosmetics
giant Mary Kay got slapped with an $11.2-million jury award
for firing a sales manager disabled with breast cancer who
the company claimed was an independent contractor.
Reported by Fred Schneyer
A lawyer for plaintiff Claudine Woolf said the judgment handed down by a Dallas jury, which he said was the first in the US, will help extend workplace rights typically reserved for employees to sales contractors, according to a National Law Journal report.
“This verdict means the 920,000 alleged independent contractors working for Mary Kay have their civil rights,” lawyer Joseph Alioto told the Law Journal, without clarifying to what extent this case applies to other companies.
The National Law Journal article presented this case background, based on court documents:
Woolf, who began selling Mary Kay products in 1995, was honored two years later for putting together a 50-person sales organization at the age of 27. She stopped selling cosmetics and began managing her sales group full time.
Woolf learned in March 1997 that
she was pregnant. Two weeks later she was diagnosed with
an aggressive form of breast cancer. Doctors told her
that she required a mastectomy followed by chemotherapy
that could kill the fetus or cause birth defects and
would probably make her sterile.
Woolf and her husband chose to
continue the pregnancy. Although she gave birth two
months prematurely, she and the baby are now
healthy.
Plaintiff ‘Sick, Bald and Pregnant’
Although Woolf was, according to
her description, “sick and bald and pregnant,” she
continued running her sales operation from her hospital
room, but could not meet sales quotas. According to
plaintiff’s documents, Woolf called Mary Kay headquarters
in September 1997 asking for a reprieve from the sales
goals.
Mary Kay managers denied the
request and a month later took away her company
car.
Woolf filed suit in Contra Costa County, California in 1998, claiming that she had been wrongly fired because of a medical disability. Mary Kay had the case moved to Dallas where it is headquartered.
After a two-week trial, the jury
found that Woolf was a Mary Kay employee, not a contractor,
and the company “acted with oppression or malice” by
refusing to accommodate her illness.
The case is
Woolf v. Mary Kay Cosmetics, No.
00-5612-J (Dallas Co., Texas, Dist. Ct.).