Veteran Waitress Wins $596,000 in Age Bias Suit : Discrimination: An Irvine-based restaurant operator is ordered to pay damages to a 51-year-old woman who said she was mistreated and eventually laid off because of her age. The company plans an appeal.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury has awarded $596,000 in civil damages to a Los Angeles woman who contended that an Irvine-based restaurant operator discriminated against her because of her age when it fired her in 1988.

“I hope I’m sending a message to women my age--over 40 and with bunions on their feet, who are working in coffee shops because bars and restaurants think they’re too old--that it’s all right to fight,” said Lisa Marie Belanger, now 51.

Jurors ordered Restaurant Enterprises Group of Irvine to pay Belanger $280,000 for her economic losses and $275,000 in punitive damages. Managers of the Irvine firm and of the Los Angeles restaurant where Belanger worked, Otto Rothschild’s Oyster Bar, were ordered to pay a total of $41,500 in punitive damages.

Belanger’s lawyer, Charles T. Mathews of Los Angeles, said his client plans to seek attorney fees, which could push the total award to more than $750,000.

Mathews said he believes it is one of the largest-ever age bias verdicts involving the restaurant industry, although that claim could not be confirmed.

Restaurant Enterprises lawyer Michael L. Kelly said Monday that the company will appeal the verdict. The Irvine-based firm is one of the nation’s largest food-service companies, operating such chains as Carrows, Coco’s, El Torito and Reuben’s.

Lawyers for Restaurant Enterprises argued that Belanger was laid off because of declining business and that she was called back to work two months later.

Belanger said she refused the job because it was not an offer for full-time work and she feared continued discrimination.

Belanger was 46 years old and a waitress at the Hungry Tiger restaurant in Los Angeles when the restaurant was acquired by Otto Rothschild’s in August, 1986. Almost immediately, Belanger claimed, the new management began reducing her hours and taking other actions intended to encourage her to quit.

Belanger said she was working about 46 hours a week before the buyout. Under the new owner, however, her hours were gradually reduced until, by 1988, she was working only eight hours a week, she said.

She also contended that the restaurant assigned her hours to younger waitresses. Belanger said she also felt humiliated when she was forced to wear a uniform that included short skirts.

Because she was no longer a full-time employee, Belanger became ineligible for company medical and vacation benefits. When she refused to quit, the restaurant managers began disciplining her for minor infractions, such as wearing barrettes in her hair, she said. The rules were not enforced for the other waitresses, she said.

Belanger said these disciplinary actions continued until she was laid off in June, 1988. She claimed to have seniority over 11 other women at the restaurant and was the only waitress to be laid off.

After Belanger sued the Irvine firm in 1988, she took waitress jobs with the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Casey’s Bar and Grill in Los Angeles. She said her former managers at Otto Rothschild’s caused Belanger to lose her job by telling her new employers that she was a “troublemaker” who had sued them, according to Mathews. Belanger’s suit claimed that she was fired from both jobs as a result of those actions.

The jury found the defendants wrong for retaliating against Belanger. Robert Kissinger, regional director of Restaurant Enterprises Group, was ordered to pay $40,000 in punitive damages, and Marilyn Marks, general manager of Otto Rothschild’s Oyster Bar, was ordered to pay $1,500 in damages.

Mathews said Belanger plans to ask the court to require that Otto Rothschild’s reinstate her.

Belanger, who has been unemployed since July, said she “wants to get my job back.”

“That’s what I do best,” she said. “I’ve been serving people for many many years.”