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Black T employee wins $5.5m in bias suit
After 21/2 weeks of testimony and 11/2 days of deliberations, a Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded Hiram Clifton, a longtime foreman in the MBTA's Charlestown equipment yard, $500,000 for emotional pain and suffering and $5 million in punitive damages.
The verdict, with its hefty punitive damages award, comes two years after the T reached a sweeping agreement with the state attorney general's office designed to eliminate longstanding patterns of racial and sexual discrimination.
The agreement was signed after a 16-month investigation into multiple complaints about a culture of racial bias within the agency.
Yesterday, T officials insisted that Clifton's case reflected the old MBTA.
''This is absolutely a message verdict,'' said Clifton's attorney, Kevin G. Powers. ''It says, `Get your act together and make sure you address issues of discrimination and make sure ... supervisors take it seriously.'''
Outside the courtroom after the verdict was returned, Clifton pumped his fist into the air and said he felt ''like a thousand pounds of pressure is off my back.''
MBTA officials, who vowed to appeal the verdict, called yesterday's judgment ''very troubling.''
''I want to be clear that this is not the MBTA of today, this is the MBTA of yesteryear,'' said Robert Prince, the MBTA's general manager and its highest-ranking minority employee. ''All of the issues that were discussed during the course of this trial were things that happened in the past.''
While acknowledging that the T has had an embarrassing history of divisive internal race relations, Prince said he has ''taken this authority to a new level'' since assuming its top leadership position in 1997.
Clifton and another black employee, Fuad Akbar, sued the T in Suffolk Superior Court in the spring of 1995, alleging that they and other minority employees had been victims of a ''terrible and long pattern of harassment, intimidation and discrimination.''
Akbar, a trackman, settled out of court for an undisclosed amount shortly before the case went to trial.
Clifton, who joined the T as a laborer in 1983, said the abuse began in 1986 when he became the authority's first black foreman in Charlestown, a promotion that marked the beginning of ''nine years of hell.''
Now a night crew foreman at a different location, Clifton said he endured a litany of mistreatment by white supervisors.
The harassment included bosses who, when Clifton entered the bathroom, turned off the light and threw firecrackers inside. On other occasions, they sprayed water and tossed wet paper towels into his stall.
Superiors also shot bottle rockets at him, scrawled racial slurs on his locker, and squeezed toothpaste over his lunch. They routinely addressed him with profanities or derisive names, including ''Roxbury mayor.''
Once, a general foreman faxed to other T offices a picture of a black woman that listed sexual acts along with Clifton's beeper number.
Throughout it all, Clifton said he complained to management, to no avail. He also filed two complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which he later withdrew, as well as three complaints with the MBTA's Equal Employment Opportunity Office, which were never investigated, Powers said.
Still, MBTA officials say they have made significant improvements in reducing discrimination and changing the face of the 6,500-employee organization, which for decades was virtually all white.
Diane Wong, the MBTA's head of organizational diversity, said this week that ''the T is now an acknowledged leader in the employment, promotion and training of minorities and women.''
Wong said that minority employment has risen from 27.6 percent in fiscal 1995 to 30.4 percent in fiscal year 1999, which ended June 30.
Wong acknowledged that in the 1996-97 period, the MBTA was the subject of a record number of civil rights complaints and investigations by state and federal authorities.
The authority has since implemented antidiscrimination and antiharassment policies, and as of July has provided training to all employees regarding policies and recourse.
Civil rights complaints decreased from a high of more than 200 in 1997 to about 100 in 1999, she said. And cases filed with the MCAD, which numbered more than 80 in 1996, were down to 40 in 1998, she said.
On the other hand, a computerized employee tracking system that was supposed to have been in place more than a year ago still does not exist. The tracking system was one of many provisions of the agreement reached between the MBTA and the state attorney general's office early in 1997.
Asked yesterday why he continued to work for the T despite the mistreatment, Clifton said, ''I had a family. I had to. ... But I knew that I would eventually have my day in court.''
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on
09/18/99.
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mid persistent complaints
that it has condoned virulent racism within its ranks, the Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority was ordered yesterday to pay $5.5 million
to a black employee who endured nearly a decade of racist jokes,
taunts, and pranks by his supervisors and was ignored when he turned
to management for help.