Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 877933 Order and Opinion.pdf

hospital also had legitimate reasons. Scrivener, 181 Wn.2d at 447. It was for the

jury to weigh whether to believe Danielson’s assertion.

Finally, the hospital relies on the unpublished case Smith v. City of Seattle,

No. 84351-6-I, slip op. at 19 (Wash. Ct. App. Dec. 4, 2023) (unpublished),

https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/843516.pdf, to argue that Danielson must

show that the hospital “departed from its policies and procedures” when it

investigated him. We hold that Danielson’s testimony that the “investigation into

whether or not [he] had disclosed personal information about Covid, was suddenly

including all these other assessments of [himself]” is substantial evidence that the

hospital’s investigation had departed from its standard procedure.

The jury’s role is to “determine the true reason for the action because the

record contains reasonable but competing inferences of both discrimination and

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nondiscrimination.” Rice v. Offshore Sys., Inc., 167 Wn. App. 77, 90, 272 P.3d

865 (2012). It is not our role. Since a reasonable juror could infer that the

employer’s stated reasons were pretextual, the court was correct not to grant the

motion for a directed verdict on the retaliation claim. See id. The court did not err

in entering judgment based on the verdict.

C. Remittitur

Finally, the hospital argues that the court abused its discretion when it

refused to remit the $21 million verdict. We disagree.

The court’s statutory authority to remit a verdict is based in RCW 4.76.030,

which states that, if the court finds the jury’s damages award “to be so excessive

or inadequate as unmistakably to indicate that the amount thereof must have been

the result of passion or prejudice,” the court may “order a new trial or may enter an