Jury Awards Nearly $750,000 To Former Farmers Insurance Agent

Nov. 06--A Fresno jury Tuesday awarded nearly $750,000 in damages to a former Farmers Insurance employee who contended she was fired because of her age and after she complained of unfair treatment.

Sharron Warehime, who turns 68 this month, lifted her glasses and wiped tears from her eyes when the verdict was announced in Fresno County Superior Court.

Jurors found that she had been a victim of age discrimination and retaliation. They also said Warehime suffered from stress and depression from her job as an insurance adjuster, but Farmers failed to accommodate her mental condition.

"It's been a long road," said Warehime, who grew up in Caruthers and worked for Farmers in Visalia and in Fresno for 4 1/2 years before she was fired in June 2006.

Her attorney, Patrick Toole, said he hoped the verdict sends a message to Farmers to treat its employees equally regardless of whether "you're young or old, male or female."

Both sides agree that Warehime was hired to work in the Visalia office in January 2002. At the time, the company was going through a transition from paper files to electronic files.

During the trial, Farmers' attorney, Christopher Maile, told the jury that Warehime never embraced the new technology and rejected training to become a better employee. When workload backed up on her, Maile said Warehime "blamed others for her problems."

Maile said Farmers had good reason to terminate Warehime: She was low-balling customers on their claims, which led to costly litigation for the company.

Toole showed the jury evidence that Warehime had been a valued Farmers employee: She did the training requested by Farmers and the company honored her with awards and good to outstanding job-performance ratings each year from 2002 to 2005. "She was a committed team player and good with customer service," he told the jury.

Toole said the climate began to change in the summer of 2003 when Warehime learned that one of her Fresno supervisors "wanted to hire his own people."

Warehime was given higher caseloads than other employees, and when an employee left the company, she was given those files, too, Toole said.

She asked her supervisor to balance the workload, "but nothing happened. No files were reassigned and she continued to drown in these files," Toole told the jury.

Things got worse for her, Toole said, because the Fresno office was filled with young, hip employees, Toole said. Warehime started hearing thing like: "I don't want to work when I'm your age" and "The old fuddy-duddy is coming in."

In October 2005, she complained to her supervisor that an evaluation of her work was inaccurate and unfair. The supervisor responded by telling her to improve her performance, Toole said.

The stress became so intense, she suffered a mental breakdown in February 2006, forcing her to take a leave of absence while her doctor treated her from depression and anxiety, Toole said.

Warehime's doctor cleared her to return to work on June 12, 2006. But when she showed up to work, a young man was sitting at her desk. "She had been fired," Toole said. "She grabbed her stuff and walked out the door."

The reporter can be reached at (559) 441-6434, [email protected] or @beecourts on Twitter.

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