Former Wayfair worker loses age discrimination swimsuit

After a one-week trial, a jury in Suffolk Superior Courtroom in Boston rejected former Wayfair software program engineer Richard DiBona’s age discrimination declare.

DiBona took the web furnishings firm to court docket over allegations that it discriminated towards him due to his age, saying the corporate fired him with out due trigger, whereas DiBona’s former supervisor and different Wayfair executives testified that there have been considerations with DiBona’s efficiency and management abilities, The Boston Globe reported.

DiBona stated in testimony final week that he acquired a constructive efficiency evaluate in February 2020 and was fired in July 2020. He’s 53. 

DiBona alleged that he was blindsided two months after the constructive evaluate with a “efficiency enchancment plan that might lead to his termination,” and charged that the plan was a approach of eliminating him after he requested for day without work to look after his two kids, who had been despatched dwelling from faculty due to the pandemic, in accordance with Globe reporting. 

Beneath the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, it’s illegal for employers to discriminate towards staff or job candidates who’re 40 or older on the premise of age, and DiBona stated youthful under-performers on the firm acquired totally different remedy. 

Wayfair executives maintained that DiBona was fired for authorized efficiency causes, and on Wednesday, a jury agreed. 

“The jury’s verdict in our favor confirms what we have now all the time recognized to be true: our group doesn’t discriminate based mostly on age or some other attribute,” the corporate stated in an announcement to the Globe. 

Like many corporations, Wayfair skilled a boom-and-bust gross sales cycle in the course of the pandemic, with annual gross sales hovering from $9 billion to $18 billion in 2020. When the second handed, it gave option to a sequence of layoff rounds. 

DiBona stated he “stays proud” that he pursued the case, regardless of not successful.

“Discrimination within the office — particularly when formed by unconscious or implicit bias — stays far too frequent and too typically goes unchallenged. I’m deeply grateful to everybody who supported me and my household all through this course of,” he stated in an announcement to the Globe.

There have been two different age discrimination lawsuits filed towards Wayfair in Suffolk County court docket from staff who had been fired in 2021. Considered one of them, filed by Mark Bissaillon, a former Pittsfield name middle customer support supervisor, was dismissed by Choose Sarah G. Kim this week. She stated it was lacking some required parts and would must be refiled.