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million in punitive damages.
Martin, who handled over
$2.5 billion of barge and
refinery-related transactions
every year for Texaco, was
verbally promised a promotion
to manager if she
moved from Houston to Los
Angeles. But after relocating,
she saw a male outsider promoted
instead. When she
sued for sex discrimination,
Martin claims she was
threatened by a manager
who said: "When you're
walking down an alley one
night, you'll get a tap on the shoulder and you'll have an
accident."The jury foreman, Rod Hoard, explained the high
punitive damages: "We wanted to set an example against
Texaco, and if we gave one million dollars, it would be like
one dollar to them." But two years after the highly publicized
award, Judge Ronald Cappai threw out the verdict on
appeal, saying Martin's damages should be limited to
$150,000. "An inflamed jury allowed their passions to get
the better of them," Cappai intoned. A higher court upheld
Cappai, so Martin and Texaco will face off in a second trial.
Martin is among a small band of discrimination fighters
whose hard-fought and well-publicized court victories have
helped make the workplace more equitable for women
employees. Over the last few decades, lawsuits have forced
companies to make fundamental changes. In the insurance
industry, women can now escape the secretarial ghetto and
become sales agents because in 1979, Muriel Kreshevsky
spearheaded a $200 million victory on behalf of 900 secretaries
denied advancement opportunities by State Farm
Insurance. Some women can now become firefighters
because in the early 80s Brenda Berkman sued to be the
first female fire fighter in the New York City Fire Department,
a force of 10,000. Companies need to be careful about
making women the "last hired and first fired," even in recessionary
times, because 48-year-old Bernice Stanfill of Del-
Mar, California, proved breach of contract and sex discrimination
against her employer. Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), and won a jury award of
$3.1 million.
And shaping career paths to fit the needs of women with
children received a boost recently when Cynthia Fisher, an
assistant biology professor, successfully suedVassar College for
paying her less then peers and failing to grant her tenure
because she took eight years off to raise her kids before her
Vassar employment. Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley
ruled for Fisher: "The persistent fixation of the Biology
Department's senior faculty on a married woman's pre-Vassar
family choices reflects the acceptance of a stereotype and bias:
that a woman with an active
and ongoing family life cannot
be a productive scientist."
But advances won through
the courts are now being
threatened. Women who win
lawsuits against employers
who discriminated and
harassed them are finding that
the battle doesn't always end
with a big bang and cash in
hand. Corporate heavyweights
such as Ford Motor
Company, AT&T, Pfizer, Texaco,
and Exxon have caught
on to what lawsuits cost them
monetarily and in bad publicity, and have banded together to
clip plaintiffs' wings. Forming a coalition called the Civil Justice
Reform Group, these Fortune 100 firms are dedicated to
stopping plaintiffs now. Under the guise of tort reform
("tort" is the term for a lawsuit in which an injured person
tries to recover money for economic damages or non-economic
damages such as pain and suffering), they have succeeded
at capping punitive damages at $300,000 in federal
courts. Now they are waging and winning state-by-state
campaigns. All but a handful of states—Colorado, Oklahoma,
Nebraska, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana—cap or
bar punitive damages. Take away punitive damages and the
possibility of a substantial settlement evaporates, not only for
plaintiffs but for the few attorneys specializing in employment
practice law not already on corporate payrolls or retainer.
This well-financed effort to stop anti-discrimination
lawsuits began with a war
chest based on initial corporate contributions
of up to $100,000 that were funneled
into research and lobbying. For
instance,Texaco sponsored a study by the
Washington Legal Foundation showing
that punitive damages awards against
businesses in five large states went from $1.1 million in 1968-
1971 to $343 million in 1988-1991. The study did not separate
out product liability suits, which generate the biggest
awards. Anita Larsen, a Texaco spokesperson says that "lawsuits
suck the lifeblood out of a corporation's bottom line."
The pressure to curb big awards has made it increasingly
unlikely that a woman who has been discriminated against
or harassed at work will prove her case and be compensated.
Jerry Leaphart, an attorney practicing in Ridgefield, Conn,
after 17 years in a Fortune 100 company, spells out what
corporate tort reform efforts signal: "The pendulum is
swinging away from employees seeking reasonable redress
under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its amendments prohibiting
discrimination on the basis of overt characteristics
ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995