Symbol in Battle Over Sex Bias Goes to Court One Last Time

Janella Sue Martin once was the $20-million woman, the winner of a record-shattering award from a Los Angeles jury in a sex discrimination lawsuit against Texaco.

Martin’s court victory--against a corporate giant that she claims unfairly denied her job promotions and retaliated after she complained--brought her a “Feminist of the Year” honor and other acclaim from women’s rights advocates. She was featured on TV shows and profiled in People magazine.

It turned out that the fortune and most of the fame were fleeting; a judge rejected the jury’s decision and tossed out her award in 1992, saying that it was shockingly “disproportionate to the injuries, damages and conduct” and “unsupported by the evidence.”

But starting today, Martin’s lawyers will plead her case one last time, under a novel legal agreement providing a no-jury, no-appeal, final trial. It will bring to a climax a decade-long legal struggle that--after starting as a seemingly garden-variety employment discrimination suit--developed into a high-stakes drama.

What the case lacks in cutting-edge legal issues it makes up for in intensity and color. It has been portrayed as everything from a blatant example of how lawyers can manipulate the sympathies of an unsophisticated jury to the story of a courageous woman’s battle for justice in the workplace.

The case has also put an unwanted spotlight on a company long criticized by shareholder activists, and currently under scrutiny by the federal government, for its policies regarding women and minorities.

Martin, 52, went to work for Texaco in 1966 at a purchasing office in her native Arkansas. Despite the legal battle, she has been a Texaco employee ever since; the company put her on administrative leave in August from her job as a credit supervisor, but she continues to draw an annual salary in the low $70,000s.

An engaging woman with an IQ of 138, Martin describes herself as a middle-of-the-road Republican who wasn’t looking to become a symbol in the battle over sex discrimination. Win or lose in court, Martin says she wants to stay at Texaco.

“This is not something I wanted to have happen to me,” Martin said, her voice beginning to tremble. But, she said, after being passed over for several promotions only because she was a woman, “I realized that if I didn’t do something, someone else would have to.”

The heart of Martin’s case involves an alleged broken promise by Texaco. Martin says she accepted a transfer and promotion from Houston to Los Angeles in 1984 on the understanding that she would be named credit manager of her new office as soon as the position was created. While she was on a vacation, however, a male employee from Texas was moved into the job.

Texaco denies that Martin’s ex-boss, Gerard L. Fisher, who is also a defendant in the case, or anyone else ever promised to promote Martin to credit manager.

“This woman is prone to hear what she wants to hear,” said James L. Robart, one of Fisher’s lawyers.

The company also says Martin, with only a year of college education, was less qualified than the man given the credit manager’s job, who held a master’s degree in business and later earned a law degree.

Texaco, moreover, has also gone on the offensive by questioning Martin’s mental health. It asserts in a pretrial court filing that specialists who have examined Martin agree she has the characteristics of a disorder “that causes her to wrongfully believe that all actions are directed at her and to react extremely to the normal stresses of everyday life.”

“In imagining conspiracy, discrimination and retaliation around every corner, it is Martin, not Texaco, who has engendered an abusive working environment for many of her fellow Texaco credit employees and supervisors,” the company’s brief argues.

Martin replies that the retaliation she reported to Texaco managers and that she cites in her lawsuit was real, not imaginary. For example, she said she overheard Texaco staffers plotting to get her fired. “When you hear it with your own ears that they’re out to get you, they’re out to get you,” Martin said.

Moreover, she said she vigilantly reported incidents of possible retaliation to Texaco for her own legal protection and because “they told me it was my responsibility to report it to them.” Now, she says, Texaco is trying to use that against her.

As for its companywide progress in hiring and promoting women, Texaco says it has made significant strides despite the company’s downsizing and the traditional shortage of women with engineering degrees and similar credentials. The company’s lawyers blame the outcome of the last trial partly on their side’s failure to get those points across to the jury, whose $20-million award stands as the biggest ever for an individual plaintiff claiming sex discrimination in the workplace.

Statistics, however, show that women’s gains have been slim. Figures from Texaco’s own expert in the last trial reveal that, in job categories related to Martin’s from 1983 to 1988, 30 employees were promoted into management positions--and none of them were women. Today, the company says its percentage of women managers is 4.3%, up from 1.6% in 1989.

While acknowledging that Texaco has made some progress over the last couple of years, Timothy Smith, executive director of Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said: “We think they have a significant problem, and not just because they have a few lawsuits.”

Smith, whose nonprofit shareholder activist group is funded by Protestant, Catholic and Jewish organizations, added: “We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and we’ve never had a company whose employees have sought us out this way, to tell us their stories, share their concerns and urge us to raise questions with management.”

Interfaith Center is not involved in the Martin case, but Smith says the group is concerned about how Texaco in various employment discrimination suits has “tried to destroy the plaintiff rather than deal with the issues.”

Separately, a unit of the U.S. Labor Department is reviewing Texaco’s workplace hiring and promotion practices, following up on critical audits of the company. Texaco declined to give details of the review, saying only that the government routinely reviews the employment records of companies that are major federal contractors.

Eager to avoid more damage to its reputation and to head off further lawsuits, Texaco has brought in extra lawyers from out of town to defend itself against Martin’s suit.

It put the Los Angeles lawyer who handled the case last time in a secondary role for this trial, and brought in three litigators from New Orleans to take charge of its defense. The company is also paying for Fisher’s two lawyers, a Los Angeles attorney and Robart, who is from Seattle.

“When a case like this comes up, it’s taken very seriously,” said Maripat Sexton, a company spokeswoman assigned to Los Angeles for the trial, which is expected to last at least three or four weeks.

“The real cost of litigation is when you have bad results,” she said.

The Martin legal team is smaller, but higher profile. It is led by Dan Stormer, a Pasadena lawyer active in liberal causes who represents Marlee M. Beyda, the former receptionist suing Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden for alleged sexual harassment.

He is joined by Cliff Jackson, a longtime friend of the Martin family from Arkansas who has gained notoriety as a fierce critic of President Clinton. Jackson, who attended Oxford University with Clinton, was instrumental in bringing forward two Arkansas state troopers who charged that Clinton, while governor, used them to arrange and cover up affairs with several women.

Rounding out Martin’s team of attorneys is an associate at Stormer’s firm, Anne Richardson--the only woman lawyer playing a key role on either side of the sex discrimination case.

Even before filing the current lawsuit, Martin fought--and won--a separate sex discrimination case against Texaco. In 1977, Martin was promoted after winning a discrimination claim filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Along with arguing that Martin was passed up for various jobs and underpaid because of her gender, her lawyers will point to a 1986 incident as evidence of the company’s policies regarding women employees. It involved a visit to Los Angeles by then-Texaco Chairman John McKinley to meet with employees at a hotel ballroom to explain the company’s financial condition.

When the floor was opened to questions, Martin headed to a microphone and asked why women were so scarce in the oil company’s management.

McKinley first laughed. Then, Martin said, he referred to female employees as “our girls, ladies, women . . . would you prefer that I call them persons?” Finally, according to Martin and other witnesses, he delivered a direct answer: “Our women don’t want to be promoted at Texaco.”

While Texaco concedes that McKinley made the remark, the company says it was an unfortunately flip--and inaccurate--reply to an unexpected question. “It was not reflective in any way of the policies of the company,” said Edward F. Kohnke IV, Texaco’s lead lawyer in the case.

While the jury in the last trial evidently was powerfully moved by Martin’s arguments, her lawyers proposed the agreement to waive a jury trial this time. In exchange, the two sides agreed that neither would appeal the judge’s verdict.

Martin and her lawyers said they feared Texaco would file one appeal after another if they didn’t do something to bring an end to the case. “We’re all growing old as we wait for this to be over,” Martin said.

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Discrimination Cases Growing

Janella Sue Martin’s new sex discrimination trial against Texaco comes as federal officials are receiving more allegations of discrimination in the workplace. These figures reflect the annual totals for workplace discrimination charges lodged with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Sources: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission