Local News in Brief : $568,000 Award Stands

Rejecting claims that the verdict would cripple the union, a judge Tuesday upheld a jury’s $568,000 award to Teamster dissidents who were attacked and beaten outside an election hall in Montebello. U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts also ordered Local 63 to pay $200,000 in legal costs for the dissidents.

Letts said the damages--the equivalent of $50 a head imposed on the 16,000-member Southern California union--will be “a cheap price to pay” if it encourages free union elections. The decision was a major victory for the dissidents, led by James Bender, of Fountain Valley, who in 1985 mounted a short-lived challenge to the incumbent secretary-treasurer, Robert E. Marciel.

That effort died after Bender and a group of supporters were attacked by a mob wearing Marciel reelection T-shirts as the dissidents attempted to enter the hall to participate in the union nominating process. Bender, 54, was beaten unconscious. Colleague Jack Douglass, 56, who planned to run for office, sustained permanent hearing loss.

Letts said in his ruling that the mob attack represented “a blatant attempt by union officials to interfere with the right of the proposed opposition candidates to wage their campaign free from coercion.”