Former Miss USA and Price is Right model Brandi Cochran won her pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against the popular game show last month. Cochran was fired after eight years on the show when she became pregnant with twins.
Cochran asserted in her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court that the tv show had a long record of poor treatment and discrimination against Price is Right models who became pregnant. She said that she put off having children out of fear of losing her job and that she was hesitant to tell her employer that she was expecting.
Producers of the game show forced Cochran to reveal her pregnancy on air and her work schedule was cut back after the news broke.
After Cochran delivered her baby (one of the twins was lost during the pregnancy) she was neither told that she wasn’t welcome to come back to work nor that she was. Instead she discovered that her photo had been removed from the Price Is Right website and then fired, because, she alleged in her lawsuit, of her pregnancy.
The jury believed Cochran and awarded her over $700,000 in compensatory damages. The bulk of the jury award – $7 million – was in the form of punitive damages against the show and its producer FremantleMedia North America. Punitive damage are not intended to compensate a victim of pregnancy discrimination for her actual losses but are intended to punish an employer for its illegal acts and deter it from doing the same to other pregnant women or new mothers.
Source: Hollywood Reporter, “‘Price Is Right’ Model Wins Discrimination Lawsuit,” November 21, 2012
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