Jury awards former Wells Fargo supervisor $22 million in ADA discrimination case

A Wells Fargo supervisor who had been fired by the banking giant won a disability discrimination lawsuit against it and was awarded $22.1 million by a federal court jury in Charlotte.

The decision for Christopher Billesdon was handed down on Friday after a week-long trial in the U.S. District Court for Western North Carolina . His case against the San Francisco-based bank began in March 2023 when he sued it over claims of violating the American with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Billesdon has a paralyzed colon and bladder that impacted the working conditions he needed and had associated side effects of taking medicine, according to his suit. Billesdon’s disability began in 1990 after an accident fractured his spine.

Billesdon said in court filings he was let go because he wanted to work from home as Wells Fargo started to have employees return to the office after the height of the COVID pandemic. But the bank told Billesdon he was being terminated because of “cost-cutting,” according to the claim made in his suit.

“We are so grateful for the jury, who courageously sent a loud and clear message that willfully refusing to follow the law is unacceptable in the community,” said Billesdon’s lawyer, L. Michelle Gessner in a statement to The Charlotte Observer. “We enforce our laws, even against offenders like Wells Fargo.”

Gessner said the jury verdict is one of the biggest in an employment discrimination case for Fourth Circuit courts, based on her research. She also said it appears to be the largest punitive damages verdict in an employment case under North Carolina state law.

When asked for comment from the Observer, Wells Fargo said in a statement: “We are disappointed by and disagree with this decision. Wells Fargo’s policies provide equal employment opportunities for all employees, regardless of disability or any other status protected by law, and we provided these opportunities in this situation.”

What the jury decided

The jury said Wells Fargo was liable under the ADA for failing to provide reasonable accommodation and unlawful retaliation. Jury members said the bank was also liable under North Carolina state law for wrongful discharge.

Billesdon’s age discrimination claim made in 2023 was dismissed before the trial began.

He was awarded $6 million in compensatory damages for back pay and $14 million for future lost earnings. The jury also awarded $100,00 for emotional distress, $1 million for punitive damages under the ADA and $1 million under N.C. state law.

About the Wells Fargo case

Billesdon was employed by the bank for about 25 years in various positions at offices in the Los Angeles area and Charlotte, home to Wells Fargo’s largest employment base.

He moved to the Charlotte area in August 2020 during the pandemic and kept his job as Head of West Coast Asset Backed Finance Sales within Wells Fargo Securities’ Corporate & Investment Bank’s Markets Division.

When Wells Fargo began talks of returning to the office, Billesdon asked for stay-at-home accommodations, according to his lawsuit. The request was denied in December 2021 and Billesdon was fired a couple of months later, weeks before a mandatory return-to-office for everyone, the suit claimed.

The Charlotte office did not have the right working conditions for Billesdon because of the bathroom being on the opposite side of the building where his groups were located, the suit claimed.

“Wells Fargo continues to say what its anti-discrimination policies are. But the jury and the court plainly heard from Wells Fargo’s own witnesses that executives at the highest level of the bank had never even read the policies, much less followed them,” Gessner said.