Hyundai Spokeswoman Suing Firm Cites Sex Discrimination, Harassment

A national spokeswoman for Hyundai Motor America testified Tuesday that a boss told her that she was underpaid and was denied a management job “partly because you’re female.”

Taking the stand on the opening day of testimony in her lawsuit against the company, Debra M. Douglas described what she says was sex discrimination and sexual harassment during her six years at Hyundai Motor America. The Fountain Valley company serves as the national import headquarters for the Korean car maker.

She accused three Hyundai executives separately of making crude public comments about her body, repeatedly inviting her to a hotel room and passing her off as a date in the presence of Korean executives in Seoul.

The company’s defense lawyers did not call any witnesses Tuesday. Lawyer Nancy McClelland of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher addressed the jury with an opening statement, however, that painted Douglas as ambitious beyond reason.

Men at Hyundai have been demoted, laid off, fired and disciplined during the past six years, McClelland said, while Douglas herself has received seven raises, from a starting annual salary of $24,600 to almost $44,000 now.

“She went step by step,” McClelland said. “From time to time, people thought about giving her further promotions” that never materialized. “She has this notion that that means she’s been disadvantaged relative to men. You are not going to hear any evidence of that.”

Douglas’ allegations that she was fondled and ogled are inflated, McClelland said, and were misinterpreted by a woman who was “secretly planning her lawsuit.”

McClelland promised to produce a “skintight” gym outfit that she says Douglas wore to the office one Saturday.

“To show up dressed like that and then say: ‘You can’t say a word about me, or I’ll call it sexual harassment’--you be the judge,” McClelland said to the jury.

The case is being heard in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana before Judge Randell L. Wilkinson.

Douglas is seeking pay that she says was lost as a result of the alleged discrimination, damages for emotional suffering and punitive damages against the company to “teach Hyundai to take its female employees seriously,” said her attorney, Donald B. Wallace of San Pedro.

On the witness stand, Douglas said she ran the company’s public relations department from early 1989, when two of her superiors left, to January, 1990. She said she acted as the company’s spokeswoman when major newspapers and TV networks called, wrote speeches for executives and organized the company’s biggest media event of the year: the preview of Hyundai’s new models.

During some of that time, a former service department manager, Lee Sawyer, was nominally manager of public relations, Douglas said. But he had actually asked her to assign him work, she said, and had repeatedly thanked her in writing for teaching him the job. “Deb, thanks for teaching me the PR ropes,” Douglas read from a Christmas card from Sawyer.

When Sawyer was transferred to another department in January, 1990, the company hired William Wolf from outside, Douglas said, rather than promote her.

Wolf later lobbied his superiors to promote Douglas to management, she said. When she asked him why she did not get the job, she said, he told her: “Deb, it’s partly because you’re female. . . . You’re never going to get ahead at this company.”

The lawsuit names four Hyundai executives: H. W. Baik, Rodney E. Hayden, Mark Juhn and Keith Duckworth.

Juhn is one of three executives whom Douglas accuses of harassing her. Of those three, he is the only one named in the suit and is the only one still with the company. McClelland said that Juhn, who is now stationed in Korea, will fly here to testify.

Douglas said Juhn held and kissed her twice in front of Hyundai’s Korean executives, and once grabbed her shoulders and bent her over to inspect her behind.

At a reception in Korea with the parent company’s executives, Douglas said, Juhn kept his arm around her during the entire 45-minute event and presented her in Korean to each executive “as though I was his date.”

When the case resumes Thursday, Wallace is expected to call other Hyundai employees to the stand.