L. A. Ordered to Pay Taxi Firm an Extra $6.4 Million : Lawsuit: Judge’s award raises to $10.9 million the judgment for Yellow Cab operator.

The financially strapped city of Los Angeles was ordered Friday to pay a combined total of nearly $11 million to the owners of a cab company for improperly interfering with the firm’s operation during a Teamsters Union strike 10 years ago.

The Golden State Transit Corp., operator of Yellow Cab, once the largest taxicab company in Los Angeles, subsequently went out of business and sued the city, winning a $4.5 million verdict from a jury last June in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The damages were more than doubled on Friday by U. S. District Judge A. Andrew Hauk, who affirmed the verdict and ordered the city to pay an additional $6.4 million in interest to Golden State.

Norm Dupont, an attorney for Golden State, said Friday that the city’s interference in the matter violated the company’s civil rights. The judge’s award, he said, was intended to compensate the company for money it would have made over the last 10 years.

City Atty. John F. Haggerty said Friday that no decision has been made on whether to appeal Hauk’s order.

The complex case, one of the longest in Los Angeles history, twice reached the U. S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the city had improperly interfered in a labor dispute and that municipalities that take such actions are liable for damages.

The controversy began in 1981 when a Teamsters local representing 800 drivers called a strike against Yellow Cab, and the City Council voted to deny the firm’s franchise until the labor dispute was settled.

Eugene Maday, president of Golden State Transit, sued.

Golden State maintained in a damage trial that began May 14 that the company was entitled to $13 million to $15 million for a decade’s lost earnings. The city claimed that the cab company was entitled to far less because in 1981 the firm was losing money and had filed for bankruptcy.

During the hearing, Zachary Fasman, one of Golden State’s lawyers, accused the city of collusion with the Teamsters and called on jurors to “send a message to the city fathers (that you must be responsible) when you take the largest cab company in the city and drive it out of business because the Teamsters asked you to.”

At the close of the trial, Maday said he sued the city “for principle.”