Jury awards half million to tech exec fired by Paso Robles firm

June 14, 2013

lawsuitA former Paso Robles technology firm executive has received a $500,000 judgment against his former employer for wrongful termination.

Paso Robles law firm Kinman and Curry successfully sued Applied Technologies Associates on behalf of Mark Kenyon, whom the company fired following the filing of a hostile work claim against him. Kenyon was a vice president of the company at the time of his termination.

Following the death of Applied Technologies’ founder and president Donald Van Steenwyk in 2009, an employee filed a claim against Kenyon for hostile supervision. An attorney then conducted an investigation into the claim, only briefly speaking with Kenyon at a nearby Starbucks.

Applied Technologies fired Kenyon without notifying him of the charges against him, Kinman and Curry said.

After a three-week jury trial in Paso Robles, all 12 jurors agreed to award Kenyon $500,671. The award is one of the largest in the history of San Luis Obispo County for wrongful terminations.

Applied Technologies Associates designs and builds technology products for the oil industry. The firm is base in Paso Robles but has more than 1,400 employees worldwide.

 


Loading...
5 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

As one who has been unjustly fired, it’s nice to know that those who think business is always right

might, at least once, be forced to remove their heads from the place where the sun don’t shine.


Hopefully the company remembers the people involved in making such a rash, rush judgment and will think twice and actually investigate before sticking their company’s neck on the block.


I guess one possible outcome here is that the lead lawyer for the firm that lost the case can add this to their resume and possibly find a job as a city attorney in San Luis Obispo county …


Losing a case doesn’t demonstrate incompetence. You’ll need a failure more spectacular than that to get a government job.


…and you need to be a life-long liberal/progressive democrat.