An Alabama jury awarded $50,000 to a Dothan woman who said her former boss had her arrested on bogus theft charges and defamed her multiple times after she told him she was leaving for another job.

Gayla White, a former marketing manager, event coordinator and bartender at Windmill Station, worked at the Dothan wedding venue from September 2016 to mid-June 2018.

In her complaint filed June 1, 2021 against Windmill Station owner John Donaldson, White said she repeatedly asked for tax documents from December and turned in her two weeks’ notice to on June 6, 2018, when Donaldson became “angry and threatening.”

At the last event White worked at Windmill Station, Donaldson “grabbed her arm and told her he would press charges for stealing if she did not return a calendar” that belonged to her boss, the suit stated.

On July 9, 2018, White was arrested on charges of stealing $2,700 and booked into the Dothan City Jail. She was arrested again roughly a week later, the lawsuit alleged.

From her initial arrest until she was cleared of the charges, Donaldson “continued to make false and defamatory comments about” White, including calling her a thief and other defamatory statements that were aired on and printed in Dothan media outlets.

White suffered, and continues to suffer, “embarrassment, great worry, shame, humiliation, loss of sleep, anxiety, nervousness, physical and mental suffering, anguish, and fright” due to the false allegations, the lawsuit stated, including fear that she would never be employed again.

She requested $1 million in compensatory damages, with the Houston County jury awarding her half that amount.

The jury also denied her request for $3 million in punitive damages.