Twila White Closing Sets Up $2.4M Total Damage Award in Wrongful Termination Trial

Twila White delivers closings en route to a $2.4 million total verdict to two professors who claimed they were fired from a small Christian nursing school in retaliation for launching an investigation into sexual harassment claims against the school’s founder.

A California state court awarded compensatory damages totaling roughly $654,000 to Anita Bralock, a former dean of the nursing school at the American University of Health Sciences, and $751,000 to Brandon Fryman, a former professor at the school, in addition to $500,000 each in punitive damages.

Bralock and Fryman accused the university and its founder, Paster Gregory Johnson, of violating Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in any school that receives federal funding, along with the Fair Employment and Housing Act, a California state statute that prohibits harassment or retaliation based on a protected characteristic like gender.

Both professors claimed Johnson fostered an overly sexualized and hostile work environment at the school, and that Johnson’s role as the school’s Title IX coordinator created an impermissible conflict of interest after students raised allegations of unwanted touching and sexually inappropriate comments.

However attorneys for Johnson and the university maintained the professors were fired due to their supposed involvement in plans to start a competing school and their alleged failure to cooperate with a university investigation into those activities.

Bralock and Fryman’s attorney, Twila S. White, asked the jury to award nearly $40 million to her clients. White told CVN after the trial that the jury focused on the retaliation aspects of the case as opposed to finding in favor of the plaintiffs regarding their hostile work environment claims.