The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Nov. 3 affirmed a jury verdict for Town and Country Federal Credit Union in a disability discrimination and retaliation suit by a former South Portland and Scarborough employee. The court also upheld an attorney-fee sanction against the employee, Jennifer L. Owen, and the exclusion of testimony from two other former employees.
In Owen v. Town and Country Federal Credit Union, 2026 ME 105, the court said the Business and Consumer Docket did not abuse its discretion on either point. Justice Douglas wrote the opinion for a panel that also included Chief Justice Stanfill, Justices Mead and Lawrence and Active Retired Justice Humphrey. The case was argued Sept. 11, 2024.
The claims
Owen was hired as a teller in 2012 and diagnosed with breast cancer the next year. She was cancer-free by early 2014. She became an assistant branch manager in 2015, was moved to a member services position after performance problems, and was fired on Oct. 25, 2018. The credit union's managers had agreed on termination about two weeks earlier, the opinion says. Owen had a doctor's appointment that day about a wart on her arm that was later found to be benign; the managers who fired her did not know about it until afterward.
Owen sued in Superior Court on Sept. 4, 2020. She alleged the credit union fired her because of a history of cancer and a perceived recurrence, and in retaliation for asking for time to see a doctor. After a five-day trial in October 2023, the jury returned a unanimous verdict for the credit union on all counts.
The discovery sanction
The credit union first asked for Owen's text messages on Nov. 19, 2020. It received none until July 22, 2021, after a court order to turn over her phone. The extraction produced hundreds of texts with Jessica Dunton Walker, another former employee, but none from before Jan. 11, 2020, four days after Owen received her right-to-sue letter from the Maine Human Rights Commission. Owen testified that earlier texts were lost when she bought a new phone; her phone bills showed a new phone six months earlier than that, the opinion says.
The trial court found Owen acted in bad faith and ordered her to pay the credit union's attorney fees and costs. At trial the judge declined to give the jury an adverse-inference instruction about the deleted texts, finding no evidence Owen knew of their potential relevance. Owen argued the fee sanction should have been withdrawn after that. The high court disagreed. It said the trial judge made clear the fees rested on other violations as well, including inconsistent and misleading answers and a failure to disclose the deletions, and that the record supports those findings. The opinion does not state the dollar amount.
The excluded testimony
Owen wanted Walker and Courtney McNulty to testify about their own terminations. Walker was let go as she was about to start maternity leave; McNulty after asking for time off to care for a sick child. The high court said neither involved a disability and that having the same human resources manager involved in each firing added little. It added that allowing the testimony would have led to trials within the trial.
Owen was represented by Guy D. Loranger and Danielle Quinlan. Peter A. Hale and Katherine E. Cleary of Pierce Atwood represented the credit union. The opinion records their arguments but no statement from either party outside the court record.
