## Facts

- Lawrence Trainor, a long-serving senior hotel executive employed by HEI Hospitality, had a history of strong performance reviews and bonuses.
- HEI undertook a restructuring and asserted that Trainor’s position was eliminated.
- Before his termination, Trainor complained internally that he was being treated adversely because of his age.
- Company officials reacted negatively to the complaint; one executive characterized the age-bias allegation as “preposterous.”
- Shortly after the complaint and related communications, Trainor was terminated in a face-to-face meeting.
- At trial, the jury rejected Trainor’s age-discrimination claim but found that HEI retaliated against him for making the age-bias complaint.
- The district court denied HEI’s post-trial motions on liability, reduced certain damages, doubled compensatory damages under Massachusetts law, and awarded attorneys’ fees and equitable relief including front pay.

## Issues

1. Whether sufficient evidence supported the jury’s finding that Trainor was terminated in retaliation for protected activity (complaining of age discrimination) under the ADEA and Massachusetts law.
2. Whether the emotional distress damages were excessive and unsupported by the trial evidence.
3. Whether the district court properly doubled compensatory damages under Massachusetts law and properly structured the remedies.
4. Whether the district court erred in denying judgment as a matter of law and an unconditional new trial on liability and/or damages.
5. Whether challenged evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, attorneys’ fees, and equitable relief were legally permissible.

## Decision

- The First Circuit affirmed the retaliation liability verdict and upheld the denial of judgment as a matter of law and an unconditional new trial on liability.
- The court held that the “split verdict” (no age discrimination but retaliation) was not inconsistent.
- The court vacated the emotional distress component of the judgment and ordered a conditional remittitur: Trainor had to remit emotional distress damages above $200,000 or face a new trial limited to that issue.
- The court directed recalculation of multiplied damages because the multiplication depended in part on the compensatory base that included emotional distress.
- The court largely upheld attorneys’ fees and equitable relief, including front pay.

## Legal Principles

- Retaliation liability may be found even if the factfinder rejects the underlying discrimination claim, so long as the employee engaged in protected activity and the adverse action was motivated by that activity.
- A jury may infer retaliatory causation from temporal proximity between protected complaints and termination, combined with evidence of decisionmaker hostility toward the complaint and evidence supporting pretext.
- Appellate courts may require remittitur of emotional distress damages when the amount exceeds what the evidentiary record can support; a conditional remittitur may be ordered in lieu of a new trial.
- When state law permits multiple damages for willful or knowing violations, the multiplied award must be recalculated if the underlying compensatory damages base is reduced.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit sustained the jury’s retaliation finding and most remedies, but limited emotional distress damages to $200,000 through conditional remittitur and required corresponding recalculation of the Massachusetts-law multiplied damages.


Trainor v. HEI Hosp., LLC, 699 F.3d 19 (1st Cir. 2012)