Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani Partner Geoffrey Lee successfully defended a global software company client in an arbitration case involving disparate impact age discrimination.
The claimant, a former executive at the company, filed for arbitration after his job was eliminated as part of a national reduction in force. He rejected the company’s severance offer, seeking millions of dollars in lost wages and stock, in addition to the chance of encouraging copycat lawsuits by other laid-off workers. The claimant made a disparate impact claim, presenting statistical evidence suggesting that older workers were laid off at an abnormally higher rate than younger workers.
“Disparate impact” cases are different from typical intentional discrimination cases, occurring when a neutral practice or policy has the unintended effect of harming a protected group in significant numbers. Given the specialized nature of this area of law and the need for sophisticated statistical analysis, the claimant engaged a well-known economics professor whose prior work had garnered significant acclaim from the Wall Street Journal.
After a week-long arbitration involving extensive testimony by witnesses and competing expert statisticians, in which the professor was found not persuasive, the arbitrator found in favor of the employer.