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After a three-day bench trial, U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield has awarded $110,000 to a Savannah Woman who claimed
to be a victim of workplace sex discrimination. The award of $45,000 in wages and $65,000 in attorneys’ fees is contained
in a 48-page, Feb. 17 order issued by Judge Edenfield in sowers v. Kemra, Civil Action No. CV487-170, which was filed in U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.
The trial, which concluded Feb. 3, stemmed from a May 1987 complaint
filed by Betty C. Sowers, an employee of Kemira Inc., formerly American Cyanamid Co., in Savannah, Sowers maintained she was
told that a promotion, approved by a company executive, would not go into effect unless she submitted to the sexual advances
of a personnel manager. After she refused and complained to higher management, the company retaliated against her, according
to the judge’s order.
Jeffrey W. Lasky of Savannah’s Ashman & Zipperer acted as lead plaintiff counsel, Assisting Lasky
was Ashman & Zipperer’s Charles R. Ashman. Elizabeth F. Bunce of Savannah’s Middleton & Anderson was associated with the
plaintiff case. Lead defense counsel was R. Jonathan Hart of Savannah’s Lee, Smith, Thompson, Black, Scheer & Hart. Mark
A. Bradley of the same firm assisted the defense. Hart declined to discuss the case, except to say, “We intend to file an
appeal.”
At the time of the demand alleged in her complaining, Sowers was an industrial engineering aide at Kemira’s
Savannah plant, which manufactures pigments used in the production of paint. Her position represented a promotion on which
she was working on a six-month trial basis. According to plaintiff counsel Bunce, after Sowers’ six-month trial period ended
in November 1985, she made several inquiries over eight weeks to a personnel manager about whether her position had been made
permanent.
Those inquiries, according to plaintiff counsel, culminated in her being told by the personnel manager that
to obtain her promotion, she should submit to his sexual advances. Says counsel Bunce, “She was told if she played his game
she would get her promotion.” According to Bunce, on Feb. 5, 1986, Sowers complained to her immediate supervisor.
That complaint resulted two days later in a meeting among Sowers, a company executive and two supervisory employees. That
meeting, in turn, triggered an in-house investigation of Sowers’ complaints. That inquiry, described as “superficial” and not
thorough in Edenfield’s order, cleared the personnel manager of the accusations brought by Sowers.
On Feb. 11, her
immediate supervisor issued a written reprimand, indicating that her progress was being jeopardized by absenteeism and use
of the telephone for personal calls. In Judge Edenfield’s order, that reprimand and other company criticisms of Sowers’ work
during the period are dismissed as efforts to blunt anticipated litigation against Kemira: “These actions were taken in an
effort to create a record that would stand up to feared litigation; and, in effect, Kemira retaliated against plaintiff by
attaching, for the first time, job-threatening significance to what had formerly been considered minor attendance and phone
use problems.”
Reacting to such events, says Bunce, Sowers took a leave of absence from April to October 1986 because
of a “stress-related breakdown.” When plaintiff returned to her employment in November 1986, she was placed in the accounting
department as a file clerk – a demotion from her previous job. She continued to receive her old salary, however. In Judge
Edenfield’s order, the court links the file-clerk job to plaintiff’s complaints about sexual discriminations: “[T]he salary
was a product of callousness and, in some degree, vindictiveness on the part of Kemira management. A clear signal was sent to
Kemira employees that any employee who dared to assert Title VII rights [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act] would pay a heavy price.”
Since returning to Kemira in November 1986, Sowers has taken a second leave of absence on doctor’s orders, according
to Bunce, who adds that her client is now undergoing therapy for “stress-related breakdown caused by adverse reaction to
sexual-harassment complaint.”
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