Lori Franchina, a lesbian and retired firefighter, was awarded $1.75 million in her second lawsuit against the city of Providence, Rhode Island. She sued the city after it denied her an accidental disability pension for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) she developed in response to years of homophobic discrimination she faced while working for the city’s fire department.
Franchina worked for the department from 2002 until PTSD forced her into early retirement in 2013. She initially filed a gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against the city in 2012. She said coworkers repeatedly called her b**ch, c**t, and lesbo; pushed and spit on her; deliberately splattered a victim’s blood and brains onto her; caused her food poisoning; forced her to work with an aggressive coworker who she had gotten a
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Her initial discrimination lawsuit concluded in 2016, with a jury awarding her $806,000. The city appealed the decision and lost.
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In 2011, one year before she retired from the department, she applied for accidental disability pension, but the city’s Retirement Board denied her application, stating that what she had encountered was no different than what any firefighter faced on the job, WJAR reported.
Instead, the board granted her an ordinary disability pension. While an ordinary disability pension pays about $22,000 annually and is fully taxable, an accidental disability pension provides over twice that amount, tax-free, GO magazine reported.
Franchina petitioned the board to re-open her accidental disability application in February 2019, but the board denied her petition in January 2020, claiming that it lacked the authority to re-open it, that Franchina had not submitted new evidence to revaluate her application, and that (due to her 2016 lawsuit victory) the “the claim had been litigated to conclusion.”
Franchina threatened to sue the city by filing a new lawsuit in 2020. Her lawsuit claimed that the city’s denial of her accidental disability pension was another form of retaliation for her discrimination claims.
“Two weeks before trial, we offered to go to mediation… just to give her a fair hearing,” said Franchina’s attorney, John Martin, “and they refused to even discuss it. They could’ve avoided millions of dollars.”
This month, a jury unanimously sided with Franchina and awarded her $1.75 million. With interest and legal fees, the total award may reach $4 to $5 million.
“That’s more than double what the city would have paid if they just granted her the accidental disability retirement in the first place,” Martin said.
The city said it is evaluating its options following the judgment but hasn’t indicated whether it will appeal the ruling.
Franchina said of the city, “They had the opportunity to fix it, they really did. They just had to discipline a few, and instead this has been 15 years now and I won’t stop fighting until everything is said and done.”
“[This second legal decision] gives me my gainful income, it gives me the ability to not decide what bill I’m paying,” she added. “I hope it helps somebody realize you can win.”
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