{"id":1511352,"date":"2025-01-02T16:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1511352"},"modified":"2025-01-02T16:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:20:00","slug":"court-upholds-7-8-million-verdict-for-transit-workers-fired-for-refusing-covid-19-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/court-upholds-7-8-million-verdict-for-transit-workers-fired-for-refusing-covid-19-vaccine\/1511352\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Upholds $7.8 Million Verdict For Transit Workers Fired For Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Court Upholds $7.8 Million Verdict For Transit Workers Fired For Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times<\/a> (emphasis ours),<\/em><\/p>\n

A federal judge in California has rejected an effort by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $7.8 million to six former employees who were fired for refusing to comply with the agency\u2019s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious grounds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles on March 25, 2021. Lucy Nicholson\/Reuters<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In a Dec. 30 order<\/a>, Judge William A. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California acknowledged minor \u201cimperfections\u201d in the jury trial<\/strong>\u2014including flawed instructions to the jurors\u2014and determined they were not severe enough to invalidate the jury\u2019s October decision<\/a> requiring BART to pay each of the six former workers between $1.2 million and $1.5 million.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alsup denied BART\u2019s post-trial motions to overturn the verdict and seek a new trial, saying that the agency failed to demonstrate that accommodating the employees\u2019 religious objections would have posed an undue hardship.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply put, on the instructions given and evidence received, a reasonable jury could have found that BART had not carried its burden of proving its affirmative defense,<\/strong>\u201d Alsup wrote, referring to the fact that, in order to prevail in the case, BART had to prove that granting accommodations such as masking, testing, or remote work in lieu of vaccination would have imposed an undue burden on the agency.<\/p>\n

BART\u2019s defense relied heavily on expert testimony to argue that no alternative measures were as effective as vaccination against COVID-19, with the judge noting that the agency claimed it had presented \u201c\u2018unrebutted\u2019 scientific expert testimony\u201d to that effect. However, Alsup noted that the jury was entitled to weigh the credibility of the experts, particularly given their financial ties to the agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn light of the large sums paid to the experts by BART, our jury was entitled to find that they were \u2018bought and paid for,\u2019 were merely parroting the \u2018company line,\u2019 <\/strong>and were not credible in light of their bias, common sense, and other evidence,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cAn expert witness is like any other witness, and it is up to the jury to decide how much weight their testimony deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alsup also highlighted inconsistencies in BART\u2019s evidence. For instance, he pointed to one BART supervisor\u2019s admission under cross-examination that pre-vaccine precautions such as masking and social distancing had been effective, contradicting the testimony of BART\u2019s own experts. Additionally, BART failed to present clear documentation of the evidence it relied upon when implementing its vaccine mandate.<\/p>\n

\u201cCuriously, BART presented zero evidence of the information actually relied upon by the BART board in adopting its mandatory vaccine requirement,<\/strong>\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cWe saw no decision memorandum presented to the board. We saw no resolution adopted by the board reciting any evidence. We heard no testimony from anyone who presented scientific evidence to the BART board or who made the decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite rejecting BART\u2019s motions to overturn the verdict and seek a new trial, the judge acknowledged minor flaws in the trial. One issue involved a gap in the jury instructions, which failed to explicitly rule out unpaid leave as a legally acceptable accommodation. However, the judge noted that BART had ample opportunity to address this issue during the trial but failed to do so.<\/p>\n

Another issue noted by the judge was when the plaintiffs\u2019 counsel violated a pretrial order by referencing other employees\u2019 denied religious exemptions.<\/strong> Alsup described the violation as intentional but noted that it occurred during the second phase of the trial, after the jury had already ruled on BART\u2019s undue hardship defense. The judge concluded that the misconduct did not prejudice the verdict.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe judge regrets these flaws but they, even in combination, did not result in a miscarriage of justice<\/strong>,\u201d Alsup wrote. \u201cThe trial was still fair enough to stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alsup\u2019s ruling upholds the jury trial\u2019s finding that BART had failed to prove that it would have suffered undue hardship by granting the vaccine exemptions, and that the six former employees met the burden of showing that there was a conflict between their religious beliefs and the vaccine mandate. This means that the jury\u2019s award of $7,825,859 in damages to the six former employees stands.<\/p>\n

BART spokesman James Allison told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the agency had no comment on the verdict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 01\/02\/2025 – 11:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/covid-19\/court-upholds-78-million-verdict-transit-workers-fired-refusing-covid-19-vaccine<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Court Upholds $7.8 Million Verdict For Transit Workers Fired For Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A federal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1511353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1511352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1511353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}