STF na MÃdia - MyClipp
STF na MÃdia - MyClipp
STF na MÃdia - MyClipp
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The New York Times/ - Politics, Ter, 17 de Abril de 2012<br />
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)<br />
City Settles Lawsuit That Claimed Bias<br />
and Retaliation<br />
New York City has agreed to pay $750,000 to a black<br />
official of the city’s Human Resources Administration<br />
who had claimed in a lawsuit that the agency’s<br />
commissioner and others had retaliated against her<br />
because she had complained about contracting<br />
practices. The settlement, which on Friday was<br />
disclosed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, came<br />
three days after the official, Sandra Glaves-Morgan,<br />
won a jury trial on her discrimi<strong>na</strong>tion and retaliation<br />
claims; the jury awarded her $420,000 in<br />
compensatory damages. A portion of those damages,<br />
$320,000, was found by the jury against the agency’s<br />
commissioner, Robert Doar, who was widely praised<br />
when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed him in<br />
2007 to head the Human Resources Administration, an<br />
agency that serves more than three million New<br />
Yorkers. Ms. Glaves-Morgan, 55, had accused Mr.<br />
Doar and others of demoting her, cutting her salary<br />
and reassigning her duties to less qualified white men<br />
and women. The jury also found that Ms.<br />
Glaves-Morgan was entitled to punitive damages on<br />
her claims, although the city agreed to the settlement<br />
before the jury had begun to deliberate on what that<br />
amount might be. On Monday, Ms. Glaves-Morgan’s<br />
lawyer and the city disagreed sharply over the<br />
significance of the jury’s findings and of the settlement,<br />
which also calls for the city to pay for Ms.<br />
Glaves-Morgan’s legal fees (her lawyer estimated that<br />
to be about $720,000). “The city has an abysmal<br />
record of timely addressing civil rights complaints and<br />
only does so after it is facing a significant jury award,<br />
as in this case,” Ms. Glaves-Morgan’s lawyer, Samuel<br />
O. Maduegbu<strong>na</strong>, said. But James Lemonedes, a<br />
lawyer for the city, said in a statement: “H.R.A. and its<br />
leaders did nothing wrong, and the evidence does not<br />
support any finding of wrongdoing. Given the risks of<br />
litigation and appeal, and the desire to save the<br />
taxpayers money, we felt that before the jury issued a<br />
fi<strong>na</strong>l verdict, a settlement was in the city’s best<br />
interest.” Mr. Lemonedes told the jury that Mr. Doar<br />
came from a family tradition of fighting for civil rights.<br />
He noted that Mr. Doar’s father, John, had served as<br />
an assistant attorney general in the Justice<br />
Department during the Kennedy administration and<br />
helped enforce civil rights laws. “That’s the man we’re<br />
talking about,” he said. The settlement will include no<br />
admission of liability, and the jury’s verdict against the<br />
city, Mr. Doar and a second official, Thomas DePippo,<br />
will be vitiated, Mr. Lemonedes said on Monday. Ms.<br />
Glaves-Morgan, a <strong>na</strong>turalized citizen from Jamaica,<br />
entered the United States in 1961, her lawyer told the<br />
jury. She graduated from Yale and obtained a law<br />
degree at Brooklyn Law School. After working for the<br />
Legal Aid Society, the state comptroller’s office and the<br />
Board of Education, she joined the social services<br />
agency in 1995, initially as a deputy general counsel.<br />
She was later appointed chief contracts officer, and it<br />
was in that capacity, her lawyer told the jury, that she<br />
objected to what she felt was preferential treatment in<br />
contracting being given to vendors whose employees<br />
were members of Local 32BJ of the Service<br />
Employees Inter<strong>na</strong>tio<strong>na</strong>l Union. In 2007, she raised the<br />
issue with Mr. Doar, after his appointment, and he later<br />
demoted her, Mr. Maduegbu<strong>na</strong> told the jury. Each time<br />
officials took assignments and duties away from her,<br />
Mr. Maduegbu<strong>na</strong> said in his summation last week, they<br />
went to “somebody who was not black.” After Ms.<br />
Glaves-Morgan had been told that her salary would be<br />
cut by 20 percent and that she would be relocated to<br />
an office in Brooklyn, Mr. DePippo allegedly said that<br />
at least she was not going to be “cleaning<br />
washrooms.” Mr. Lemonedes, the city’s lawyer,<br />
rejected the allegations of discrimi<strong>na</strong>tion , and said,<br />
for example, that Mr. DePippo’s comment had been<br />
twisted out of context. He had been trying to reassure<br />
her, he told the jury, adding, “What happens? No good<br />
deed goes unpunished.” In court, the city argued that<br />
Mr. Doar had a solid record of advancing members of<br />
minority groups, and that he had removed or demoted<br />
whites and promoted blacks in his administration.<br />
Connie Ress, a spokeswoman for the agency, said on<br />
Monday that the accusations of discrimi<strong>na</strong>tion<br />
against the officials were “wholly without merit.”<br />
“H.R.A.’s key leaders are as diverse as New York City,<br />
and Commissioner Doar’s record throughout his tenure<br />
in promoting women, people of color and ensuring<br />
integrity throughout H.R.A.’s programs stands on its<br />
own,” she said. Ms. Glaves-Morgan declined to<br />
comment, but in court on Friday, she told the judge,<br />
Harold Baer Jr., that although she was disappointed<br />
with some aspects of the deal, “we have a settlement; I<br />
am agreeable to it.” This article has been revised to<br />
reflect the following correction:<br />
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