BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A jury has ordered a Mountain View optometrist to pay $735,003 to an employee who sued him for recording her in the bathroom.
Dr. Kenneth Chang previously admitted to recording the employee while he was a manager at Site for Sore Eyes at 650 Castro St., so the only issue in the case was damages.
A jury on June 6 ordered Chang to pay $700,002 to the employee and $35,000 to her husband, who confronted him.
Site for Sore Eyes will have to pay another $100,001 in punitive damages to the woman, court records show.
The woman who sued Chang said she met him at his San Jose store in November 2022. Chang hired her as a sales associate and her husband as a lab technician, and they began working in downtown Mountain View on Jan. 4, 2023, the suit said.
Chang allegedly made sexual comments about customers and employees and had angry outbursts, the suit said.
Chang’s employees found his behavior “disturbing, offensive and unprofessional” but didn’t know the full extent of his “reprehensible conduct” until Jan. 23, 2023, the suit said.
That’s when the woman noticed something reflective behind the toilet paper rolls on the shelf directly across from the toilet and discovered a cellphone recording her, the suit said.
The woman said she deleted the recording and discovered several other recordings of people in the bathroom, including one that was 46 minutes long.