Sportswriter TJ Simers, who worked five years for The San Diego Union but inspired hatred from local sports fans, was awarded $7.1 million Wednesday in a case against his next employer — the Los Angeles Times.

TJ Simers, former sportswriter at The San Diego Union
TJ Simers, former sportswriter at The San Diego Union

The former sports columnist, 65, sued the Times, claiming the paper forced him out due to his age and a disability.

A 12-member jury in Los Angeles Superior Court deliberated two days after a six-week trial, finding the paper had discriminated against Simers because of his age and because he suffered a transient ischemic attack, or a mini-stroke, in March 2013.

Simers came to The San Diego Union in 1985 and left for the Times five years later, where he made as much as $234,000 a year. (The morning Union merged with its sister paper, the afternoon Tribune, in 1992.)

According to law360.com, “The jury awarded Simers $330,358 for past economic damages, $1.8 million for future economic damages, $2.5 million for past noneconomic damages and $2.5 million for future noneconomic damages, totaling more than half of the roughly $12.2 million Simers’ attorney, Carney Shegerian of Shegerian & Associates Inc., had asked the jury to award during Monday’s closing arguments.”

Shegerian said in a statement Wednesday night that the “legendary” columnist is gratified the jury “saw the truth,” and issued a damages award to compensate him for a “loss of career odyssey,” the site reported.

The Los Angeles Times said it would appeal the verdict.

“Our editors acted to protect the integrity of the newspaper and to uphold fundamental principles of journalistic ethics,” a spokeswoman was quoted as saying. “We will continue to work through the legal system to resolve this matter.”

Simers originally sought $18 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

As long ago as December 2003, Simers wrote in the Times: “The Chargers are moving to Los Angeles. Just kidding, but it’s just so much fun scaring the yokels in San Diego.”

The same column said: “A few years ago, much like Jane Goodall living among the chimpanzees in Tanzania, I chose to live among these rubes in the San Diego area to see how small-town folk exist with so little to entertain themselves.

“I remember when they built a Wal-Mart, and how excited and bubbly people got. For a moment I understood the kinship Goodall felt with the apes.”

Simers referred to the Chargers as the Slugs.

“The yokels were so stoked after the team lost the Super Bowl that they agreed to remodel the football stadium,” he wrote. “Every media outlet in town, including the local shopper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, threw its support behind it, so the city agreed to buy any unsold tickets with tax money for the next decade.”

A 2012 Union-Tribune message board thread was titled “San Diego Fans arent the only ones that think TJ Simers is a TOOL.”

“Simers is a complete ***,” said one commenter. “He publicly humiliated his own daughter in his column for months simply because he didn’t approve of the job her fiance had. I much prefer Jim Harbaugh’s approach to Simers when he was in the NFL. He spit on him.”

In 1998 at the Times, he wrote a column that famously trashed Ryan Leaf, the new Chargers quarterback, before the player imploded.

“Met the punk the other day, before all of San Diego fell in love with him after he had made the Kevin Gilbride-coached Chargers a winner, admittedly a feat to rival anything ever accomplished by Edison or Einstein,” Simers began.

In 2002, sportsbusinessdaily.com wrote of Simers: “Readers of the Los Angeles Times either love T.J. Simers or hate him, but they definitely read him.”

Sports editor Bill Dwyre was quoted as saying: “My biggest fear in giving Simers the Page 2 column last year was that readers wouldn’t read the rest of the sports section.”

Said Simers: “When you watch someone scan your column in record time, it’s very discouraging. You have a few seconds to grab someone’s interest, so I try to have fun. I poke fun at myself, my family and everyone else.”

Simers worked at the Times from 1990 to 2013, when he moved to The Orange County Register and eventually accepted a buyout.

Like Simers himself, social media comments were acerbic.