Pro se plaintiff awarded $203K in mixed jury verdict in employment discrimination case
Brian Vukadinovich says a number of lawyers were interested in representing him in an age-discrimination and retaliation case against his former employer.
But the Indiana teacher and former law firm employee has long had an interest in legal matters and wanted to represent himself at the weeklong trial of his 2013 lawsuit against Hanover Community School Corp., reports the Northwest Indiana Post-Tribune.
The result in the Hammond case was a mixed verdict earlier this month. A federal jury found for the school district on Vukadinovich’s age-discrimination and retaliation claims, but awarded him $203,840 after finding that his due-process rights were violated.
Vukadinovich said he was “very pleased” with the fruit of the thousands of hours of work he estimates he did on the litigation.
As the jury began deliberating, “I felt very confident because I knew I had the truth on my side and I knew I had the law on my side,” he told the newspaper.
