California jury awards fired manager $8M

Jeanette Ortiz — a 14-year Chipotle veteran before she was fired in 2015 — was awarded nearly $8 million by a California jury in Fresno County Superior Court for loss of wages, as well as damage to her reputation and emotional and mental distress.

On Monday, she and her attorneys settled with Chipotle for a separate, confidential amount — apparently in lieu of punitive damages, which could have run as high as nine times the nearly $8 million award. This put an end to the three-year ordeal that had branded the mother of nine a criminal.

“She’s the American Dream, she’s just a hard-working person. And when you call somebody a thief, you destroy their life,” Ortiz’s attorney, Warren Paboojian, said after Monday’s verdict. “That’s the ultimate. You’re not going to be able to get a job anywhere with that label hanging over her head.”

Ortiz could not be reached for comment. Paboojian said she worked 50 hours a week as a general manager at the Denver-based Mexican fast-casual chain, making $72,000 a year. When Ortiz was fired in January 2015, she was up for a promotion under which she would have been paid $100,000 a year. For years, Ortiz had received glowing performance reviews.

Last week’s verdict was first reported by the Fresno Bee.

Paboojian said that in fall 2014, the Chipotle location where Ortiz worked had an extra $626 on hand after an armored car that routinely came to swap large bills for smaller denominations did not show up, according to court documents. Paboojian said Ortiz found the extra money, sealed and stapled it in a manila envelope, and contacted the corporate office to flag the extra cash. She then put the money in a safe in view of a surveillance camera.

That December, Ortiz filed a workers’ compensation claim while suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. Paboojian said her bosses were unhappy that she would be missing work and that Ortiz believed she was fired because of her disability.

On Jan. 3, 2015, Ortiz texted her boss and two other superiors to say the money was missing from the safe, Paboojian said. She told them she had last seen the money on Dec. 30, along with another

assistant manager.

At that point, the store brought in another manager who looked at the surveillance footage and said it showed Ortiz taking the money and putting it in her backpack on Dec. 29 — a charge she denied.

When she asked to see the footage, the employees told her that was against corporate policy.

But Paboojian said there is no written policy that dictates whether employees can be shown video footage in these cases.

“They use that lack of corporate policy as a weapon against their employees when they want to get rid of them,” he said.

In court, Paboojian said Ortiz’s bosses recorded over the tape and deleted text messages and other notes detailing why they fired her, the Bee reported.

Still, Robert Hinckley, an attorney for Chipotle, told jurors that the company has a policy of not showing video evidence to employees, the Bee reported.

On Monday morning, a Chipotle spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up email asking whether it is company policy to not show employees video footage. The spokesman also did not respond after the case was closed.

Paboojian told The Post that surveillance footage in the store tapes over itself periodically.

“If you don’t clip parts or save it, you can just let 45 days run and then it just tapes over and they say ‘oops,’ “Paboojian said.

Last week, Hinckley told jurors that it was a mistake that the footage was lost, according to the Bee.

Hinckley told jurors that while Ortiz’s bosses had no ill will toward her, they felt betrayed when she allegedly stole the money because the company had supported her through four pregnancies and four worker’s compensation claims, the Bee reported.

By Paboojian’s recollection, the total damages awarded to Ortiz were Fresno County’s the secondlargest employment verdict.

Since she was fired, Ortiz has not been able to find work, Paboojian said. Whenever she applied for jobs, she would have to note on her résumé that she was terminated and tell potential employers that she was fired for stealing.