Rancho Gordo Inc., the Napa heirloom bean company that lost a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former worker, will get another day in court.

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An order signed on Monday by a Napa County Superior Court judge sets up a new trial for Rancho Gordo, which in April was ordered to pay some $252,000 damages to Martha Martinez after she accused the company of firing her due to her pregnancy.

Judge Cynthia P. Smith agreed with Rancho Gordo’s contention that the man in charge of its hiring decisions could not reasonably have known that Martinez — a part-time worker in the shipping department — was pregnant at the time she was terminated in February 2020.

Rancho Gordo directors have maintained Martinez, who had been hired three months before, was let go because of slower business after the 2019 holiday season, and that she never told managers she was expecting.

No date for the new trial was immediately announced. A status conference in the case is scheduled for Sept. 1.

Jurors in Rancho Gordo discrimination case award plaintiff over a quarter-million dollars in damages Jurors in a trial for discrimination lawsuit filed against Napa heirloom bean company Rancho Gordo reached a verdict Thursday to award the plaintiff about $252,000 in damages.

Martinez, a shipping clerk who was placed at Rancho Gordo by a temporary staffing firm, alleged in her 2021 lawsuit that the company discriminated against her due to her pregnancy, sex and race. A Napa County jury agreed with her in March and then awarded her $15,566 in past earnings, plus $86,400 in future medical expenses, $75,000 for past emotional distress and $75,000 for future emotional distress.

Jurors agreed that Martinez’s pregnancy was a substantial motivating reason for Rancho Gordo to end her assignment and not hire her to future assignments, and that her complaint that the company had terminated her due to her pregnancy was a major reason why it declined to hire her back. (The jury did not agree that Martinez’s origins in El Salvador was a significant reason for her firing.)

However, Rancho Gordo, in a June 14 filing, attacked the verdict on three grounds — insufficient evidence to support the verdict, excessive damages, and irregularities in the trial.

Smith supported only the first claim of insufficient evidence in a July 28 hearing, according to court records, ruling that Jason Lucero — Rancho Gordo’s director of operations, who made all decisions on hiring temporary workers — made the call to dismiss Martinez. Lucero testified at trial that he was unaware of his employee’s pregnancy before terminating her Feb. 14, 2020, and that he had been out of the office on the two previous days, when Martinez told at least three co-workers of her child on the way.

Trial evidence points to a post-Christmas business slowdown as the main reason Martinez was let go, according to Smith’s ruling. As sales dipped at Rancho Gordo, Lucero decided to drop one employee and chose Martinez, who worked only part time and was the shipping staff’s only temporary worker, the judge wrote.

Smith’s ruling acknowledged trial evidence indicates another Rancho Gordo supervisor, Mayra Barajas, did learn of Martinez’s pregnancy and likely recommended to Lucero the worker’s dismissal for that reason. However, despite that recommendation, the final decision to dismiss Martinez lay with Lucero, who made his decision for his own reasons, according to the ruling.

“There was little, if any, evidence that (Barajas’) recommendation to let Ms. Martinez go substantially motivated Mr. Lucero to terminate Ms. Martinez,” the judge wrote. “Instead, the evidence at trial was that Mr. Lucero made all hiring and firing decisions of temporary employees, with input from (Barajas).”

Photos: Napa Valley Faces and Places, August 12, 2023