Judge Reduces Award, But Backs Verdict
against Atlanta-Fulton
A federal judge has reduced from $24 million to $16.8 million the amount awarded to eight white female Atlanta–Fulton County Public Library workers in a reverse discrimination suit against the library system, its director, and several board members. However, U.S. District Judge Beverly B. Martin of the Northern District of Georgia validated the verdict by saying in mid-May that board Chair William McClure, Vice Chair Mary Ward, and Director Mary Kaye Hooker “engaged in intentional affirmative conduct by transferring the plaintiffs to lower job duties because of their race, at a time when these defendants were well aware that it was in violation of the law to do so.”
After the January 16 ruling, city attorneys sought a new trial and petitioned Martin to reduce the award significantly. However, according to the May 20 online law.com, Martin denied the motion for a new trial and wrote in a 74-page order that attorneys for the librarians had “presented a pattern of discrimination by Fulton County against white employees, and a knowledge of that history by the defendants.”
In reducing the award, Martin eliminated damage payments to one librarian who was given more job responsibilities, reduced compensation to one librarian who had retired and another who resigned, reduced emotional pain and anguish compensation from $1 million to $500,000 each, and eliminated punitive damages against board member Benjamin Jenkins.
Posted May 27, 2002.
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