A lesbian and retired Rhode Island firefighter was awarded nearly $2 million in damages in a lawsuit involving her accidental disability pension, which could balloon to $5 million after interest, local NBC affiliate WJAR reported last month. 

Lori Franchina previously won over $800,000 in a separate lawsuit detailing the anti-LGBTQ+ abuse she suffered while working with her fellow firefighters.

Franchina joined the Providence Fire Department in 2002. She retired on disability in 2013 after she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the habitual anti-LGBTQ+ abuse she endured on the job. She filed for accidental disability in 2011, but was denied by the retirement board. She sued and was awarded over $800,000 and declared eligible for disability by a jury in 2016.

While Franchina was given disability, it was general disability versus accidental disability, which pays at twice the rate and is not subject to income tax. She sued again and won. Lawyers estimate with interest, she will be eligible for a payday of up to $5 million.

Franchina’s lawyer, John Martin, said the retirement board has no one to blame but themselves for the loss. 

“Two weeks before trial, we offered to go to mediation with them where the only thing we were seeking was for them to reopen the application and provide her with a fair hearing, and they refused to even discuss it,” Martin told WJAR. “They could’ve avoided millions of dollars that they’re going to pay on this judgment by simply giving her a fair hearing, and they refused to do it two weeks before the verdict came down.”

During the original trial, representatives from PFD tried to downplay the abuse Franchina received, but jurors heard a litany of horrific and even life-threatening examples in court. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit described the abuse she received in the decision written by Judge Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson.

“‘C**t,’ ‘b***h,’ ‘lesbo’ all are but a smattering of the vile verbal assaults the plaintiff in this gender discrimination case, Lori Franchina, a former lieutenant firefighter, was regularly subjected to by members of the Providence Fire Department (‘the Department’),” Thompson wrote in the ruling. “She was also spit on, shoved, and – in one particularly horrifying incident – had the blood and brain matter of a suicide-attempt victim flung at her by a member of her own team.”

“That was the incident that broke me,” Franchina said.

She said she welcomes the ruling because it provides her with financial security and the message of hope it gives to others in similar circumstances.

“It gives me my gainful income, it gives me the ability to not decide what bill I’m paying, it definitely provides me with comfort,” Franchina reflected. “I hope it helps somebody realize you can win.”