A federal appeals court has affirmed a $2.6 million compensatory and punitive damages award to a former Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority worker who charged she was terminated because of racial discrimination, stating the authority had not proven its case.

Plaintiff Michelle Dimanche, who is black and was a motor person on the Boston-based MBTA green line beginning in 2000, got into an altercation with a co-worker in January 2013 and was suspended, then terminated because this was her fifth infraction, according to Monday’s ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in Michelle Dimanche v. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

Ms. Dimanche filed suit in U.S. District Court in Boston, charging racial discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress. During a four-day trial in October 2016, Ms. Dimanche and her witnesses testified she had been subjected to “unrelenting racial harassment by MBTA staff,” said the ruling. She testified that each of her previous four infractions “had been fabricated and was part of the management’s concerted effort to terminate her employment.”

MBTA witnesses testified on the authority’s disciplinary policy, the details of the altercation, its investigation and its decision to terminate Ms. Dimanche, but never asked its witnesses to address Ms. Dimanche’s racial harassment allegations, according to the ruling. A jury returned a verdict of $1,325,426.91 in compensatory damages and $1,300,000 in punitive damages.

The MBTA appealed the District Court’s denial of its motions for judgment as a matter of law, for a new trial and to vacate or reduce the punitive damages award.  A unanimous three-judge appeals court panel affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

The “MBTA says that the evidence produced at trial was insufficient to support either the compensation or the punitive damages awards,” said the ruling. “Like the proverb that a battle can be lost for want of a nail, the MBTA loses its appeal largely for want of its making appropriate objections and offers of proof before the trial court.

“The evidence was more than sufficient to support the compensatory damages award for wrongful termination and to justify the punitive damages award,” said the ruling.