A state appeals court threw out a $1 million jury award Wednesday and ordered a new trial in a labor case at Lawrence Livermore weapons lab that earned notoriety for the University of California in Congress.

Former Livermore computer technician Dee Kotla said through attorneys that she will return to court on allegations that she was fired as punishment for testifying against the lab in a sexual-harassment case.

"This case is every bit as good now as it was then," said Kotla attorney J. Gary Gwilliam.

Lab officials welcomed the ruling. "We're very happy, very pleased with the decision," said Livermore spokeswoman Lynda Seaver.

The lab and the university as its operator say they fired Kotla for using government equipment to make $4.60 in personal phone calls and doing work for a former lab worker's software business.

A lab attorney unearthed those violations in a search of Kotla's phone and computer records while Kotla was testifying about a pattern of sexual harassment by a senior lab scientist.

After a two-month trial in 2002, jurors split 6-3 in Kotla's favor. They awarded her $1 million after an expert witness testifying that the picayune nature of Kotla's violations of lab policy, the lab's history of disciplining workers more mildly for similar violations and other factors were "indicative of retaliation."

UC and lab attorney Henry Lederman argued that the trial judge never should have let industrial psychologist Jay Finkelman offer his opinion on the core of the case.

"What motivates someone to do something, this is what jurors do every day without the help of self-styled experts telling them what to think," Lederman argued recently to California's 1st District Court of Appeals. "That was enough to have this matter reversed because it was so damaging to the defense."

A three-judge panel agreed Wednesday, saying it appeared the expert testimony "played a decisive role" in the verdict and finding it "reasonably probable" that the lab otherwise would have fared better.

Inflammatory evidence

The appellate court mentioned the case's most inflammatory evidence in passing. While testifying against the lab in a deposition, Kotla took a restroom break and, sitting apparently undetected in a stall, overheard one lab attorney tell another, "If Kotla knew what was good for her, she would shut up."

A Massachusetts congressman turned the Kotla case into a cause celebre last year, holding it up as emblematic for the double punishment that workers at U.S. nuclear-weapons facilities face in lawsuits defended with federal taxpayer dollars. As of early January, the U.S. Department of Energy has reimbursed the University of California more than $800,000 in legal fees for the Kotla case, in addition to $1.2 million in plaintiff's fees to date.

Rep. Ed Markey used the case to hammer at UC executives and Energy Department officials. Congress later ordered all UC-run federal labs, including Livermore, put up for competitive bid for the first time in more than 50 years.

Lab-keeping efforts

Kotla's retrial is likely to coincide with the university's efforts to retain its operation of Los Alamos, Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley labs.

"Bring'em on," Gwilliam said. "It's justice delayed but not justice denied."