A Los Angeles jury has awarded a Filipino nurse more than 41 million dollars for wrongful termination after she was fired for raising concerns about unsafe working conditions.

NICU charge Maria Gatchalian, who worked at Kaiser Permanent in Woodland Hills, California since 1989, claimed in a 2021 lawsuit that she was fired by the hospital in 2019 as an act of retaliation.

The lawsuit cites several incidents in which Gatchalian raised concerns on understaffing and unsafe working conditions between 2016 through 2019.

She claimed hospital management discouraged her from submitting formal complaints to avoid investigation and corrective actions while claiming to be harassed.

Kaiser eventually terminated her for violating policy when she was resting her bare feet on a medical device meant to hold sick babies.

Kaiser, which maintains they had justly terminated Gatchalian, plans on appealing the verdict.

Today, our LA jury returned a $41.5 million whistleblower verdict for Maria Gatchalian, a 30 year NICU charge nurse at Kaiser Woodland Hills. Maria had the courage to speak up about patient safety and chronic understaffing. Kaiser fired her in retaliation hoping to silence her pic.twitter.com/VfgfB9npZb

— David deRubertis (@derublaw) December 12, 2023

Gatchalian’s lawyer, David deRubertis, has released a statement applauding Maria for her courage to speak up about patient safety.

The verdict comes just 2 months some 75,000 Kaiser employees had staged a three day strike over working conditions.

• More than 75,000 US healthcare workers begin 3-day strike

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