Jury Spanks Alarm Firm With $1.7M Verdict

In a case of a hostile spanking environment, a California jury awarded $1.7 million to a former alarm systems saleswoman who didn't find anything "motivational" about being paddled on the buttocks at staff meetings.

The award included $1.2 million in punitive damages for Janet Orlando, 53, who endured the spankings -– delivered by two supervisors with a rival company's yard sign -- while she worked at the Fresno office of Alarm One, Inc. The supervisors must pay $100,000 of the punitives themselves.

Alarm One said Orlando was a willing participant in "motivational sales antics." Employees did not perceive it as sexual harassment, the defense claimed, and both men and women got spanked.

"We don't have evidence of sexual propositions," co-counsel Katherine Hart told the Fresno County Superior Court jury. "We don't have overtly sexual behavior."

But there was evidence that the spankings inspired lewd comments from spectators such as "Bend over, baby" and "You've been a bad girl." And the jury found Alarm One liable for sexual harassment and sexual battery.

"Alarm One went way further than pushing the envelope in this case -- way further," plaintiff's lawyer Nicholas "Butch" Wagner, who rejected a $150,000 pre-trial settlement offer, said in his closing argument.

The defense also got nowhere with the argument that Orlando, a plaintiff in a previous sexual harassment case, was trying to make money off lawsuits. "I guess the jury hated Alarm One," co-counsel K. Poncho Baker told the Fresno Bee.

Individual defendants facing punitive awards are former vice president of sales Rondell Harris and former supervisors Rob Harlan and Nina Correia. Harlan evidently is in a bad way, testifying that he seldom works and that he has two girlfriends who take care of him.

The judgment in Orlando v. Alarm One divides up as follows: