The trial was bifurcated into successive liability and damages phases. The plaintiffs won on liability and then proposed that the damages phase be delegated to a Special Master. Unfortunately, the District Court appointed McNulty, who had once made a pass at a female attorney from the bench, and who permitted Eveleth's "nuts and sluts defense" to go ahead. The defense asked the plaintiffs about personal material revealed by discovery ostensibly to determine if something besides the harassment at work might have caused the emotional injuries they complained of. The more likely purpose, however, was to embarrass, intimidate, and discredit the plaintiffs with matter that was unrelated to the case. (As the Labor Lawyer article notes, one of the Jenson plaintiffs withdrew from the case "rather than disclose that her son had been convicted of murder.")

Special Master McNulty did not, however, allow the plaintiffs to introduce their own psychological experts to counter the implication that they had trouble at the mine because they were crazy whores. Then, in his Report and Recommendation, in which he blamed the plaintiffs for being histrionic and for misinterpreting "reasonably expectable interpersonal conflicts in sexual terms," McNulty discussed Jenson's rape although her testimony relating to it was under seal pursuant to his own discovery order. (As Bingham and Gansler write, "When the subject of rape came up in court, the courtroom was cleared of any extraneous people, and the testimony was marked as confidential in the transcript.")

This bizarre phase of the trial actually set the plaintiffs up for victory in the Eighth Circuit because McNulty made reversible errors of law. The Eighth Circuit's decision vacated the Special Master's Report and Recommendation and ordered the District Court to conduct a new trial on damages. The case was settled in early 1999, when Jenson and Anderson were on medical leave from Eveleth and Kosmach was dead of Lou Gehrig's disease. All told, the litigation had three important consequences, to quote again from The Labor Lawyer: "(1) limiting abusive discovery in sexual harassment litigation; (2) recognizing that sexual harassment can form the basis of a class action; and (3) making corporate America realize the importance of preventing sexual harassment."

North Country takes Jenson's case and transfigures it into the heroic crusade of one Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron), a battered wife who moves back in with her parents to figure out how to take care of herself and her two kids. She's scraping by washing hair at a salon when she recognizes Glory (Frances McDormand), a high school girlfriend who now drives truck at the mine and who recommends Josey get a (better-paying) job there, too. Glory warns Josey that it's rough for women at the mine--the men feel that women take jobs that properly belong to men, especially since the contraction of industrial production in the US is throwing a lot of men out of work. (The movie doesn't mention that Eveleth had begun hiring women in 1974 pursuant to a consent decree with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor; Eveleth had agreed to guarantee 20 percent of new jobs to women and minorities.) But nothing could prepare Josey, or us, for what it's like for women at the mines.