In an expansive decision reversing a Bronx Supreme Court judge, a state appeals court has reinstated a jury-trial finding that a former Montefiore Medical Center employee was battered on the job with a telephone handset. The panel also has tossed aside the judge’s major reduction of the jury’s $6 million total damages verdict to $523,805, deciding instead that she can take home $2.5 million, if she chooses, and the panel ruled that the employee is due a new trial on her gender discrimination claims and prayer for punitive damages.

The Appellate Division, First Department ruled that plaintiff Blanca Madrigal, who’d alleged she was subjected at Montefiore to years of vulgar ethnic slurs, demeaning assignments, sexual harassment and the battery with handset, can accept $2.5 million in damages for the jury’s awards to her for battery, hostile work environment emotional distress, and mental anguish caused by retaliatory termination of her employment. And she’d receive the trial court judge’s reduced verdict amount of $123,805 for lost wages.