​ 
 
 "In 2008, she was transferred to Texas and worked as an administrative associate in the dispatch office at the Alvarado Camp. Although a good, dedicated and productive employee, she was terminated on June 3, 2009, when she apparently violated the company's policy against procreation." 
 
 To her knowledge, Lynda was the only employee "laid off" in her area even though there were five employees who had less experience in that position than she did. None of those employees was pregnant. Thus, the company retained employees in the same or similar positions with less qualifications who were not in the protected class. The Defendant's proferred reason for termination was a pretext for discriminatory purpose. 
 
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 A Dallas woman filed suit against Halliburton last week claiming she was fired after her supervisors learned she was pregnant. In court documents filed on December, 21, Lynda Darden alleges she was fired in the summer of 2009 when "she was sexually discriminated against and terminated as a result of her pregnancy." Per the court docs, which indicate Darden was hired in Colorado and then transferred to Texas:If you detect a hint of snark in that wording, you're picking up what Darden's attorney, Todd Kelly, is putting down: He's become high-profile in recent years for suing the energy contractor.The Houston-based attorney presently represents Jamie Leigh Jones , the woman who sued former Halliburton subsidiary KBR alleging that she was gang-raped in 2005 by one known and several unknown co-workers and locked in a shipping container to prevent her from reporting the crime. Her case caused Al Franken to sponsor a defense bill amendment stipulating that defense contractors can't force people not to sue them if they get raped on the job. Kelly also represents several other women with sexual assault and/or harassment cases against KBR and Halliburton.Kelly tells Unfair Park that Halliburton is a less-than-ideal place to work for women: "I don't believe that Halliburton treats its women as they should." He says Darden told her supervisors she was pregnant even though she "had already been told by co-workers that she would be fired if she reported her pregnancy." According to Kelly, that was the general office scuttlebutt:. In court documents, Darden says she first told her supervisor of her pregnancy in March 2009 and was told on June 3, 2009, that she was losing her job as part of a general lay-off, but Darden says she was the only person let go at the time:For a brief time, Kelly says Unfair Park, his client's job was even advertised on the Internet after she was laid off, though he says Halliburton "took it off pretty quickly." Darden is seeking damages for back pay and "front pay in lieu of reinstatement, which would not be feasible under the circumstances."Read Darden's complaint in full below. ||||| A former KBR Inc. employee who said she was drugged and raped while working in Iraq lost her lawsuit against the military contractor Friday. 
 
 FILE In this June 14, 2011, file photo Jamie Leigh Jones, center, listens to a question along with her husband, Kallan Daigle, right, outside the federal courthouse in Houston. Jurors resumed deliberations... (Associated Press) 
 
 The jury of eight men and three women rejected Jamie Leigh Jones' claims a day after starting deliberations in a Houston federal courthouse. Jones, 26, said she was raped in 2005 while working for KBR at Camp Hope, Baghdad. 
 
 Jones sued KBR, its former parent Halliburton Co., and a former KBR firefighter, Charles Bortz, whom she identified as one of her rapists. The Houston-based companies and Bortz denied her allegations. 
 
 The alleged sexual assault was investigated by authorities but no criminal charges were filed. 
 
 "I was going up against a monster," Jones, sobbing loudly, told The Associated Press. "I'm devastated. I believe I did the right thing coming forward." 
 
 KBR applauded the jury's verdict, which in addition to rejecting Jones' claims that she was raped also denied her fraud claim against the company. 
 
 "Since 2005, KBR has been subjected to a continuing series of lies perpetuated by the plaintiff in front of Congress, in the media, and to any audience wishing to lend an ear to this story," spokeswoman Sharon Bolen said in a statement. 
 
 When the jury decided that Jones hadn't been raped, a number of the questions before them were rendered moot, including accusations against Halliburton, said KBR attorney Daniel Hedges. 
 
 Jones said the civil trial wasn't a fair fight. She said she felt she lost because the jury wasn't allowed to hear details of her attacker's past but were allowed to hear hers. Bortz said the sex was consensual. 
 
 Jones said she believed her bruises and the description of the rape would have swayed jurors. 
 
 "I just thought that the physical evidence would help. I guess the fact that my entire life was on display and (his) wasn't" made a difference, Jones said. 
 
 Her attorney had asked jurors to award her as much as 5 percent of KBR's net worth in actual or punitive damages. That would be more than $114 million, the Houston Chronicle reported. 
 
 Attorney Ron Estefan, in his closing arguments, accused KBR of neglecting to enforce its policies against sexual harassment for years by its contract workers in Iraq. The neglect facilitated Jones' rape, he said. 
 
 Lawyers for Bortz and the companies argued that Jones concocted her story out of fear of gossip among co-workers at the camp. 
 
 Jones' mother, Breanna Morgan, said she worried that the outcome might discourage future rape victims from coming forward, saying her daughter, "had to go through so much and she did it to help others." 
 
 "I feel like, because she did that and then there was this verdict, others won't want to," Morgan said. "I feel it sends a clear message." 
 
 Bolen, the KBR spokeswoman, said the "outcome of this jury trial as judged by her peers is the same result that the State Department got in 2005; that the Justice Department found in 2008. We are deeply gratified that the justice system has worked." 
 
 Jones, who had been a clerical worker in Baghdad's Green Zone, testified that she was drugged and then raped by a group of KBR firefighters. She said Bortz was in her room the next morning. During four days on the stand, she told jurors she has no memory of what happened because she believed she was drugged with Rohypnol, known as the "date rape drug," just before she was sexually assaulted. 
 
 The Associated Press usually doesn't identify people alleging sexual assault, but Jones' face and name have been in media reports and she has promoted her case on her own website. 
 
 Bortz's attorney tried to show that after the alleged rape, Jones did not appear to act like she had been attacked but instead went to work as normal, joked around and talked about camp gossip. Bortz no longer works for KBR. 
 
 Joanne Vorpahl, one of KBR's attorneys, tried to portray Jones to jurors as someone with a history of being dishonest on resumes and job applications, including not disclosing in a medical questionnaire she filled out before leaving for Iraq that she had been treated in prior years for various things, including depression, dizziness and kidney and bladder problems. Jones said those were simply mistakes and she never intended to be dishonest. 
 
 Jones also accused KBR officials of locking her in a trailer after she told them about the rape and not letting her call her family. She testified she's been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, takes medications for anxiety and had to have reconstructive surgery for her breasts, which were disfigured in her attack. 
 
 KBR and Halliburton, which split in 2007, were unsuccessful in having Jones' case settled through arbitration as stipulated in her contract. 
 
 Due in part to Jones' case, federal lawmakers in 2009 approved a measure prohibiting contractors and subcontractors that receive $1 million in funds from the Department of Defense from requiring employees to resolve sexual assault allegations and other claims through arbitration. 
 
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 Weber reported from San Antonio. Associated Press writer Will Weissert in San Antonio contributed to this report. ||||| Jurors in a federal courtroom on Friday rejected a former Conroe woman's claims that she was drugged and raped by several Kellogg Brown & Root firefighters while working for the company in Iraq in 2005. 
 
 The jury also rejected Jamie Leigh Jones' claims that the former Halliburton subsidiary committed fraud by "inducing her to enter into an employment contract." 
 
 By answering "no" to those two questions, the jurors rendered the other 12 questions in the jury charge moot, bringing an end to the month-long trial of Jones' lawsuit. 
 
 Jones, 26, sued KBR and former KBR firefighter Charles Boartz, 34, in 2007, accusing the defense contractor of creating a "sexually hostile work environment" by neglecting its sexual harassment policies. Boartz was the only defendant identified by name in the alleged sexual assault she said occurred while working at KBR's Camp Hope installation in Iraq in 2005. 
 
 Jones said the attack was so brutal that she required two reconstructive surgeries to her chest and more than 200 visits to psychiatrists to treat post traumatic stress disorder. She also alleged employees of the Houston-based company imprisoned her in a shipping container after she reported the attack, telling jurors she was denied food, water and the chance to call her family for help. 
 
 Jones wept as the U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison read the verdict. 
 
 She later told the Associated Press she was devastated by the verdict. 
 
 "I believe I did the right thing coming forward," she said. 
 
 "We respect the jury's decision based upon the evidence they were allowed to see," her attorney Todd Kelly said, "but we do think it's a shame that Jamie's entire personal history was dragged before the jury when her rapist's criminal history, including violence against women, was suppressed from them." 
 
 Defense attorneys throughout the four-week trial painted Jones as a liar, accusing her of making up the story of being drugged and raped by several KBR employees. They pointed to doctors' tests that showed no signs of the date rape drug called Rohypnol in her system after the alleged incident. 
 
 "We have known the truth, and KBR has known the truth for a long time now," KBR attorney Dan Hedges told reporters outside the downtown federal courthouse. "We're very relieved and gratified to get that out to the public." 
 
 'Fully justified' 
 
 Boartz has insisted that he had consensual sex with Jones. The jury agreed. 
 
 His attorney Andrew McKinney said inconsistencies in Jones' medical records and statements to authorities after the alleged incident backed up his theory that she accused Boartz of raping her only because she was embarrassed about her indiscretion and wanted a way to get out of her one-year contract with KBR. 
 
 "(The verdict) was fully justified, fully merited and long overdue," McKinney said. 
 
 Policy thrown out 
 
 Jones' attorney Ron Estefan told jurors in closing arguments Thursday that KBR had known how widespread sexual harassment was in the company, but chose to ignore it because the remedy was too costly. Referencing the fact that Boartz was questioned two days after the alleged incident and never was reprimanded, he suggested the company gave other employees and corporations the green light to commit similar offenses. 
 
 Jones made her explosive accusations public in May 2007, but did not see the inside of a courtroom for nearly four years because a provision in her employee contract required company disputes to be settled through arbitration. 
 
 The policy was thrown out in the case when the U.S. Senate approved an amendment in 2009 to prohibit the Defense Department from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve sexual assault cases through arbitration. 
 
 Estefan asked jurors Thursday to award Jones' up to five percent of KBR's net worth, a sum he estimated at more than $114 million. 
 
 jessica.priest@chron.com
– Does everybody's favorite energy contractor, Halliburton, hate procreation? A former Halliburton employee is suing the company for wrongful termination and sex discrimination because, in the words of her lawyer, "she apparently violated the company's policy against procreation." Halliburton said it fired the pregnant administrative associate as part of general lay-offs, but the canned worker points out no one else in her department was fired, including people with less experience. Additionally, soon after the firing Halliburton briefly posted a job listing online for her former position, reports the Dallas Observer. The woman's lawyer, Todd Kelly, has sued Halliburton several times in recent years, including over the gang-rape of a woman at former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, a defense contractor. "I don't believe that Halliburton treats its women as they should," Kelly said. The rape case led Minnesota Sen. Al Franken to sponsor a defense bill amendment stipulating that defense contractors can't bar lawsuits from employees for sex assault.