An Iranian-born research scientist who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit alleging co-workers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham harassed her for nine years because of her ethnicity was awarded more than $3.8 million in damages on Tuesday.
Fariba Moeinpour, 62, said she was thrilled with the jury’s verdict, handed down in the Northern District of Alabama, and was ready to start her life over.
“Day and night, I was looking for a job, any job, but nobody would hire me because my name was ruined,” Moeinpour told NBC News. “Now, my good name has been restored.”
UAB, according to the jury’s verdict, was ordered to pay Moeinpour $3 million in damages.
Mary Jo Cagle, a former UAB data analyst identified in the lawsuit as Moeinpour’s harasser, was ordered to pay $500,000 in restitution and another $325,000 in restitution.
Moeinpour’s attorney, Eric Artrip, said his client “put up with years of being called all kinds of horrible names.”
“This case is a reminder that people don’t have to suffer racial discrimination in silence and that the American justice system works for all of us,” Artrip said.
UAB spokeswoman Alicia Rohan said the university “does not tolerate harassment, retaliation or discrimination of any kind.” He did not specify what legal steps would be taken next.
“We disagree with the verdict in this case involving a former employee, and we are considering our next steps,” Rohan said in an email.
Cagle did not respond to a request for comment.
Moeinpour is a United States citizen who immigrated from Iran in 1989 and lives in Birmingham. He said the ordeal began in February 2011 after he was transferred from another UAB lab to one headed by Clinton Grubbs.
In a 2021 lawsuit, Moeinpour said he had been transferred to Grubbs’ lab after discovering evidence of falsification and data manipulation and reporting it to a federal Department of Health and Human Services agency.
Cagle, according to the lawsuit, began harassing Moeinpour almost as soon as Grubbs started working at the UAB School of Medicine.
Moeinpour said Cagle taunted him repeatedly, telling him he had a “weird ass” name and “go back to Iran.”
“Our country doesn’t need your kind,” Cagle said, according to the lawsuit.
Moeinpour said in the lawsuit that the abuse escalated over the years and that Cagle nearly ran her and her daughter over in a car and then pulled a gun on them “on the UAB parking deck while telling them this is what ‘we’ do. to the ‘sand’ n—–.’”
Moeinpour said that over the course of nine years, she repeatedly complained to UAB’s human resources department and to Grubbs, who was also Cagle’s supervisor. He is not a defendant in the lawsuit.
But Grubbs was reluctant to intervene, and he told Moeinpour that “Cagle was in the mafia” and that he was afraid of him, according to the lawsuit.
Finally, Moeinpour told Grubbs on February 13, 2020, that he had gotten his head around it and called human resources.
“Dr. Grubbs grew worried, saying he would lose his job, that he would question why he did not report her complaints, and that he would kill himself if that happened,” the lawsuit states.
Grubbs, according to the lawsuit, called campus police to have Moeinpour arrested “to shut him up about Defendant Cagle’s actions.” And at one point, Grubbs “grabbed Ms. Moeinpour by the chin and knocked her down, cutting her face with his nails and causing her to bleed.”
“When Ms. Moeinpour fell to the floor, he fell on top of her and held her down,” the lawsuit states. “In an attempt to get rid of him, Ms. Moeinpour slapped him.”
When campus police arrived, Moeinpour admitted that he had assaulted Grubbs “to try to get him to stop assaulting and groping her,” according to the lawsuit.
“I spent 30 hours in jail,” Moeinpour said.
UAB fired her on February 18, 2020, “for violating policies against fighting and absenteeism, despite knowing that Ms. Moeinpour said she was assaulted by Grubbs and without interviewing her or requesting evidence to substantiate her claim,” the lawsuit claims. said.
Moeinpour repeated that account in a complaint filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in August 2020 on behalf of his ex-wife, Fariba Moeinpour Lawsen. They are divorced.
The UAB police department’s February 13, 2020, domestic violence report described Moeinpour as the “out of control” aggressor who slapped Grubbs during an argument.
Grubbs said in the report that the altercation began when Moeinpour “contacted his head and contacted his supervisor without contacting him.” Grubbs did not give a reason in the report why he thinks he did it.
Grubbs said he did not want to press charges and that they “have been in touch for the past year.”
Moeinpour told NBC News in an interview on Moeinpour in 2021: “I never had a romantic relationship with Dr. Grubbs.”
Grubbs did not respond to an email seeking comment on the ruling.
Moeinpour said her daughter, who is a lawyer, supported her as she fought the law. “He put his life on the line to help me,” he said.
“I’m going to stay in Birmingham; it’s my home,” he said. “I love America. But what they did to me is not American. We are all human beings under God.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com