University will appeal $1 million judgment awarded to ex-employee

BY BARBARA PALMER

University lawyers say they plan to appeal a $1 million judgment awarded by a Santa Clara County jury on April 9 to former employee Robin S. King. After a three-week-long trial, the Superior Court jury found that the university had interfered with King's employment with Santur Corp. after she resigned from a job as a scientific technician at the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility in March 2001.

In her suit against Stanford, King alleged that university employees had unfairly restricted her use of the nanofabrication laboratory, negatively affecting her employment at Santur, a Fremont telecommunications company where King was hired in March 2001. The nanofabrication facility, which does research related to computer chip production, is funded by the National Science Foundation and is open to government and industrial users, as well as academic users.

King, who had worked for the university for 21 years, also claimed that university employees made derogatory remarks about her temper to her employers at Santur. In January 2002, King was notified that she would be laid off by Santur.

Ruling that the university had acted with "oppression" and had intentionally interfered with King's employment at Santur, the jury awarded her $390,000 in compensatory damages and $625,000 in punitive damages.

"I don't think the verdict was supported by the evidence," said Debra Zumwalt, vice president and general counsel for the university. There was "absolutely no basis for punitive damages," Zumwalt added. The university plans to file a request for the judge to reverse the jury verdict or order a new trial within the next few days, she said. If those motions are not granted, the verdict will be appealed.

In her complaint, King also had asked for damages for gender discrimination and retaliation, but those charges were dismissed before trial as being without merit. The gender discrimination and retaliation charges stemmed from disagreements over laboratory restrictions placed on King while she was still an employee at Stanford. In 1998, King and an ex-boyfriend, a current Stanford employee who also used the nanofabrication facility, were placed under a "mutually exclusive stay-away order," at King's initiative. King and the employee were asked to work lab schedules that ensured that they were not in the lab at the same time. Those restrictions limited her ability to complete her work and her growth in her job at Stanford, King claimed in her suit.

King's suit charged that prior to resigning her position at Stanford to accept a position at Santur, she received assurances from the university that, should she resign her position at Stanford, she would be granted the same access to the laboratory as any other industrial user.

Circumstances changed between the time that King received those assurances and the time that King left Stanford, said Melissa Burke, senior university counsel. Five days before King resigned, she received a warning that required she take anger management classes as a condition of continued employment. When she sought to return to the lab as an outside user just two weeks later, Stanford advised her that she would need to complete the anger management training requirement and agree to other terms and conditions governing her future lab access. King refused to accept Stanford's conditions, Burke said. Restrictions on her lab access and adverse statements made by Stanford employees to her new employers destroyed her relationship with Santur, King's suit claimed.

"Stanford believes that it imposed reasonable conditions on Ms. King designed to ensure the safe operation of the lab," university lawyers said in statement issued after the verdict. The requirement that King agree to terms of use imposed on her while she was still a Stanford employee "were intended to ensure the safety of all lab users," the statement said. "Previously in this lawsuit, the court had ruled that Stanford's imposition of these conditions on Ms. King, as its employee, was legitimate, non-discriminatory and non-retaliatory. Ms. King refused to agree to Stanford's terms.

"The maintenance of a safe and respectful workplace is one of the university's core values and the conditions imposed on Ms. King for her continued use of the lab were in furtherance of this value," said Thomas Fenner, deputy general counsel.