Retaliation claim against big-box store results in jury award for plaintiff

Summary

• Jury awarded $667,000, including $500,000 in punitive damages
• Plaintiff claimed she was fired after requesting disability accommodation
• Evidence showed non-disabled employees were treated more leniently
• Defense seeks new trial over “me-too” witness testimony

A Cass County jury has awarded $667,000 to a Pleasant Hill woman who sued big-box retailer Menards after she was fired from her part-time cashier job in what she claimed was retaliation for requesting a 5-minute break from standing on her feet each hour to relieve knee and back pain.

In a pair of 9-3 verdicts following a four-day trial in late February, the jury determined that Denise King, now 70, was entitled to $167,000 in actual damages for lost wages and emotional distress, and an additional $500,000 in punitive damages.

Lead plaintiff’s attorney Kevin Baldwin outlined the case details as follows:

A 67-year-old widow at the time of her firing, King worked 20 hours a week at the Belton Menards, a position she held for four years to supplement her retirement income.

During her second year of employment, King was counseled for a $77 clerical error. During her third year, she underwent knee surgery. Combined with prior back surgeries, this rendered her a disabled person under Missouri law, Baldwin said

“She orally requested an accommodation allowing her to take more frequent breaks during her shifts — a measure expressly recognized as reasonable under Menards’ own policy manual,” her attorney said.

The accommodation was granted by her manager at that time and honored for approximately one year until early 2023, when a new assistant general manager at the Belton store required King to submit a formal written accommodation request for her breaks, which she did before being fired, purportedly for a mistaken $5,000 overcharge of a contractor.

Baldwin noted that the “error was identified, corrected within a few days, and caused no actual financial loss to the company or the contractor”— but was cited, along with the $77 error from two years prior, to justify the termination.

At trial, Baldwin said his client “maintained that the termination was pretextual, and that the real reason was her disability and her formal accommodation request.”

“Evidence at trial revealed that 11 non-disabled employees who had not requested accommodations had made multiple mistakes in a short period of time — many of which resulted in actual financial losses to the company — and were only given warnings,” he said.

In addition to King, another former employee with disabilities who had been similarly dismissed testified about her own termination — testimony that forms the basis of a March 30 defense motion for a new trial.

“The court erred in allowing ‘me-too’ evidence” from the witness, wrote defense counsel Byron Bowles Jr. and Kathryn Dumovich of McAnany, Van Cleave & Phillips in Mission, Kansas. “If plaintiff did have a submissible case, it was incredibly weak and it certainly did not justify this astronomical verdict.”

In a separate, federal lawsuit filed in March, a former Menard’s assistant manager in southwest Missouri alleges she was subjected to humiliation, discrimination and retaliation after store managers forced her to remain on the sales floor while she was visibly bleeding through her clothing during an unexpected menstrual event, then yelled at her in front of customers and mocked her distress.

RELATED: Click to search for and submit your Verdicts & Settlements

$667,000 jury verdict

Employment disability discrimination

Breakdown and distribution of value:$ 167,000 in actual damages (lost wages and emotional distress); $500,000 in punitive damages

Venue: Cass County Circuit Court

Case Number/Date: 23CA-CC00052/Feb. 26, 2026

Judge: Circuit Judge Stacey Lett

Last pretrial demand: $125,000

Last pretrial offer: $20,000

Caption: Denise King v. Menard, Inc

Plaintiff’s attorneys: Kevin Baldwin (lead), Erin Vernon, Emma Wilson and Sylvia Hernandez; Baldwin & Vernon Trial Attorneys,  Independence

Defendant’s attorneys: Byron Bowles, II (lead) and Kathryn Dumovich; McAnany, Van Cleave & Phillips, Mission, Kansas