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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 />

222

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