A Black man’s legal team in northern Maine did not expect to receive a fair trial in the less diverse area, racially and ethnically.
However, David Ako-Annan, 46, won a $3 million verdict from an all-white jury after suing Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center for firing him as the practice manager of its Orono primary care location.
Ako-Annan alleged in the lawsuit that a supervisor discriminated against him based on race
and sex, as he identifies as a Black male, according to WGME.However, the hospital reportedly denied the allegations from Ako-Annan, claiming he was not addressing the concerns regarding his leadership at the hospital.
During the seven-day trial that reportedly began last week before U.S. Magistrate Judge John Nivison in U.S. District Court in Bangor, Ako-Annan revealed to an all-white jury that he was the only Black and only male manager within all five primary locations of EMMC.
He told jurors of the unfair treatment he received a few months after his supervisor Donna Ashe began her position in 2017, about four years after Ako-Annan’s start date in June 2013.
Ashe, he claims, denied any possible acts of prejudice, telling Ako-Annan she had a Black foster child. However, jurors found that Ashe was not a foster mother when she made the remark to Ako-Annan regarding the bi-racial child she reportedly cared for in the 1980s.
The hospital’s attorney, Kasia Park of Portland, told the jury Ako-Annan was fired because of poor job performance claiming he managed a “tense, stressful, and negative” work environment.
According to Bangor Daily News, Ako-Annon’s race and sex discrimination lawsuit sought “unspecified compensatory damages, including back pay and the salary and benefits he would have earned had he not been fired, as well as punitive damages.”
He testified on Oct. 24 that he had not found a new job in his field after spending hours a day job searching and spent $100,000 of the $120,000 in savings for living expenses.
The outlet reported Ako-Annan was awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages and another $1.5 million in punitive damages but found the case had nothing to do with his sex. Ako-Annan plans on giving life in Maine a second chance.