Texaco Is Told to Promote Winner of Sex Bias Case
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has ordered Texaco to promote Janella Sue Martin, the 48-year-old credit supervisor who last year won the largest jury award ever in a sex discrimination suit.
While Texaco hinted Tuesday that it was prepared to appeal, Martin and her attorney said the ruling by Judge Ronald E. Cappai vindicates Martin’s fight and the $20.3 million in damages the jury awarded last October. Attorneys for both sides received notice of Cappai’s ruling late Monday.
Martin’s suit alleged that she lost promotions twice to men whom she maintained were less competent.
She called the judge’s ruling “a great victory for me and other women and minorities who have suffered unlawful discrimination. It’s also a victory for Texaco, because it gives them one more opportunity to act in good faith. Now we’ll see if they will.”
Her lawyer, Dan Stormer of Hadsell & Stormer in Los Angeles, said: “This is not only a jury saying she had been damaged, but a judge saying she should have been a manager. The judge upheld her right to have that promotion.”
Texaco disagrees that it must promote Martin to a manager’s position.
Spokeswoman Kelly McIntosh said Texaco was pleased that the judge declined to specify a position to which Martin must be promoted. There is a “very wide range” of salary and jobs in grade level 18--the classification to which Cappai ordered Martin promoted, McIntosh added.
While it intends to comply with the judge’s order, Texaco believes that the damage award was “unreasonable and contrary to the facts in the case,” McIntosh said. Once final judgment has been entered in the case, the company is expected to take legal steps asking that the award be overturned.
Stormer said the judge’s decision means that Martin’s promotion by two grade levels must include commensurate pay and responsibilities. She now earns $65,000 a year. Stormer said “we believe the logical pay is to give her what the current manager gets, which is approximately $100,000.”
Last September, a Superior Court jury agreed with Martin’s contention that she was the victim of sex discrimination. The jury, after admonitions from Cappai, reduced its initial award for actual damages to $2.65 million. Stormer said that amount will be doubled because of a finding of fraudulent inducement--that is, that the company held out a promotion as an incentive for Martin to move to Los Angeles from Houston.
A week later, the same jury added $15 million in punitive damages to Martin’s award. The total of $20.3 million remains by far the largest amount awarded in a sex discrimination suit.
But monetary damages were only part of Martin’s suit. All along, said Stormer, Martin had been seeking the promotion she said she was twice denied while less competent men were promoted.
In the suit, Martin said she agreed to transfer to Los Angeles in 1984 because of a promise that she would be made manager of credit. In Los Angeles, she set up the credit department--but while she was on vacation, Texaco transferred a man from Houston to become her boss.
