Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 723421.pdf

Citation: Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 723421.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
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Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/723421.pdf ↗

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evidence and testimony of alleged age discrimination in contravention of the trial

court's order. For example, Lodis repeatedly testified about and referred to the

ages of members of Shenk's executive team and suggested that Shenk was

motivated to make age-based employment decisions, even though there was no

allegation that Lodis ever admonished Shenk for such actions. Lodis also

suggested that Shenk had made "ageist" comments for which Lodis did not

admonish him.

On these occasions, Corbis objected to the admissibility of such evidence

and asserted that, by suggesting that Shenk was an "ageist," Lodis had "opened

the door" to the admissibility of evidence of the age discrimination verdict. The

trial court repeatedly upheld its prior ruling excluding evidence of the age

discrimination verdict,7 while also cautioning Lodis's counsel that "he was taking

a bit of a risk by going down th[at] road."

Ultimately, on the fifth day of trial, after Lodis repeatedly elicited testimony

suggesting both that Shenk was biased against older workers and had engaged
in age discrimination, the trial court concluded that Lodis had opened the door to

admission of evidence of the age discrimination verdict.

I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about the issue of whether
the prior jury verdict regarding age should come into evidence. As
you know, my primary concern in ruling that it should stay out is I
was concerned, as I indicated this morning, that if the jury was
aware of that verdict, that they might make shortcuts and, for
example, decide that if there is no basis for the age claim, then
there is no basis for the retaliation claim.