On May 6, 2003, plaintiff Michael Marlo, 48, an employee of United Parcel Service Inc. for over 22 years, filed a class-action complaint against UPS. The complaint included claims such as unpaid overtime, failure to provide required meal and rest periods or compensation for said periods so that UPS would be required to re-classify all such supervisors as non-exempt employees under California law. The court certified a class of approximately 1,300 other employees. Damages were estimated to be in excess of $400 million. The class action was decertified on May 19, 2008. Since then, Marlo has attempted to reinstate class certification. Since July 2008, Marlo’s class-action lawsuit has spawned approximately 54 individual lawsuits against UPS by former members of the class action. Prior to November 2008, Marlo had allegedly been repeatedly denied a promotion to a manager position, despite being recommended by two division managers and his direct managers. According to plaintiff’s counsel, Marlo wasn’t promoted due to his involvement with the class action. On Nov. 12, Marlo was terminated. Allegedly, this termination was due to an incident that occurred in early October when Marlo was off work and attempted to leave the parking lot at UPS’s Sylmar location. On Oct. 27, Marlo was questioned about the incident by George Ramos Jr. and Juan Cobian, representatives from Diversified Risk Management, Inc., an investigative firm hired by UPS in 2008. Marlo alleged that the investigators approached him at work, took him to a back room, and questioned in an intimidating fashion about the parking lot incident. In a later interview session, UPS and the private investigators allegedly accused Marlo of lying about the incident, contradicting his story told to Ramos and Cobian on Oct. 27. Marlo sued UPS, as well as Diversified Risk Management, Ramos and Cobian. In October 2009, Diversified Risk Management, Ramos Jr. and Cobian agreed to a confidential settlement with Marlo. On Oct. 23, 2009, the case was moved to United States District Court for the Central District of California. According to plaintiff’s complaint, UPS wanted to find a way to fire Marlo without getting into trouble, and so hired Diversified Risk Management to gather information about him and “formulate scenarios” to claim justification for terminating. According to plaintiff’s counsel, the efforts to fire Marlo were in retaliation for his class action and a wrongful termination to prevent him from testifying at an Occupational Safety and Health Administration hearing about poor working conditions for UPS drivers, and hinder his efforts to appeal the decertification of his class action. This retaliation, according to the plaintiff, violated California Labor Codes §§ 98.6, 232.5, 1102.5 and 6310. Plaintiff’s counsel also maintained that the termination could serve as a message to the other employees involved in the individual lawsuits that they too would be fired if they continued to pursue litigation. This intimidation, combined with the allegedly faux investigation against Marlo and the “outrageous” conduct therein, constituted an intentional infliction of emotional distress, counsel argued. UPS disputed all of the plaintiff’s claims, claiming that Marlo was already a member of management, and was not ready for promotion before 2008. Also, Marlo was asked in 2008 about his interest in being promoted, and he said he didn’t want to be promoted while he was suing UPS, according to the defense. Defense counsel maintained that the October 2008 incident that caused UPS to hire Diversified Risk Management to investigate was one where Marlo initiated an unprovoked, profanity-laden verbal assault on a customer that entered the workplace. Marlo allegedly began pointing his finger aggressively and threatening the customer. Later Marlo intimidated the other employee that witnessed and reported the incident, defense argued. According to UPS, the events of this incident constituted gross misconduct, and termination was warranted., As a result of his termination, Marlo was forced to find a new career path, he claimed. He experienced financial turmoil due to his sudden loss of employment. He eventually earned a real estate license, and began pursuing a career. Marlo sought to recover both economic and non-economic damages against UPS for lost income and emotional distress. Punitive damages against UPS were also sought. The plaintiff’s expert economist testified that the present day economic value for Marlo’s economic damages was $1.77 million. The defense contended that Marlo failed to mitigate his own damages. It was also contended that Marlo was not entitled to any damages for his promotion claim. According to the defense’s expert economist, there was no evidence to calculate any sort of damages for not being promoted by UPS. The expert testified that Marlo’s total economic damages were $289,577.