ST. LOUIS -- A jury awarded former Enterprise corporate controller Thomas Dunn $4 million on Friday in his wrongful-termination case.

Enterprise said the company plans to appeal the St. Louis County Circuit Court decision.

In closing arguments Friday, Dunn's lead attorney, Lisa Van Amburg, asserted that Dunn was the only Enterprise employee willing to challenge the ethics of some of the company's business practices. His firing on Jan. 4, 2001, she said, was in retaliation.

But Enterprise lead attorney Michael Kahn dismissed Dunn's depiction as a whistle-blower, arguing that his attorneys had failed to prove that the company had violated any laws. Instead, Kahn said, Dunn was fired because of his combative management style and failure to get along with colleagues.

The jury deliberated seven hours before returning its 9-3 verdict Friday night.

Earlier last week, Dunn's attorneys suffered a setback when Superior Judge Jack L. Koehr ruled that they couldn't pursue the claim that Dunn was fired for refusing to commit accounting fraud. But the judge's action didn't deter the jury from ruling in Dunn's favor.

During the trial, Dunn testified that he challenged a number of Enterprise's business practices because of ethical issues. Those practices, he said, included over-depreciating vehicles to boost accounting gains at remarketing, labeling part of the company's rental fees as a surcharge, and selectively licensing cars in states with lower licensing fees rather than in the states where the cars would be based.