AutoZone Manager Said "I Feel Sorry For You" to a Pregnant Employee. The Jury Came Back With $185 Million.

Rosario Juarez started at AutoZone in National City, California in December 1999. She was a cashier. By 2001 she was Parts Sales Manager. By October 2004, after completing a training program AutoZone normally required only of external candidates, she was a store manager. She had earned every rung of it.

Two Sentences That Cost $185 Million

In November 2005, Juarez told her district manager she was pregnant. His response, per the trial record: "Congratulations... I guess." Then: "I feel sorry for you." What followed was not sympathy. Her workload swelled with unnecessary tasks. In February 2006, she was demoted back to assistant manager and transferred to a different store, losing her bonuses and overtime. On November 20, 2008, AutoZone terminated her employment.

What the Jury Decided

Juarez sued in 2008 under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. The trial ran eight days in early 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The jury - five men, three women - found AutoZone liable on all claims and delivered a verdict of $185,872,719.52: $879,719.52 in compensatory damages for lost wages and emotional distress, and $185 million in punitive damages. It was believed to be the largest single-plaintiff employment verdict in U.S. history at the time.

The punitive figure took the jury roughly five hours of deliberation. AutoZone's legal posture throughout the case was described by observers as "deny everything." A separate piece of trial testimony surfaced something darker: a former vice president allegedly said that once a court-ordered tracking requirement for women's advancement expired in 2004, the company could "finally start getting rid of these women."

The Settlement

AutoZone appealed. In July 2015, the company dropped its appeal as part of a settlement, and the parties moved jointly to dismiss. The final dollar figure Juarez received was never disclosed. The $185 million verdict, however, had already gone into the books - and into the EEOC's and plaintiffs' bar's collective memory as a marker for what a pregnancy-discrimination jury can do when the quotes are this clean.