A manufacturer in Pennsylvania must pay back wages and damages to two employees who cooperated with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigators when a co-worker lost part of a finger in an accident at the plant.

A district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia ordered Lloyd Industries to pay Matthew Spillane $117,710 in back pay and $100,000 in punitive damages, and to pay Santos Sanna $373,568 in back pay, $56,121 in front pay, and $400,000 in damages. In all they are ordered to pay more than $600,000.

It was determined that Lloyd Industries wrongfully terminated these employees for engaging in protected activity, a violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Mr. Spillane had never been disciplined or warned about performance deficiencies. He was terminated five days after the OSHA inspection began with no explanation. Mr. Sanna was also fired without explanation.

The company tried to limit damages awarded to Mr. Sanna, introducing evidence of alleged sexual harassment of another employee. The woman testified that she did not bring up the harassment to her employer until after he had been fired and said messages he sent were flirtatious, but they were not harassing. There was not an investigation into his behavior from the company.

The district court judge determined that even though after-acquired evidence of misconduct is generally admissible to limit an employee’s recovery in a wrongful termination suit, she did not think that Mr. Sanna would have been fired based off these allegations. She found evidence of other inappropriate and sexist behavior that had been tolerated in the company, which undermined their use of this alleged harassment as a defense in this case.

Read more here and read the full case here.