Ex-Salesman Is Awarded $11.1 Million in Bias Case

A black Pitney Bowes salesman who underwent racial harassment from colleagues, including taunts of “ooga-booga,” has been awarded $11.1 million, one of the largest verdicts of its kind in Los Angeles, according to civil rights lawyers.

The company vowed Monday to appeal.

Pitney Bowes Inc. will ask Superior Court Judge Malcolm H. Mackey to overturn or reduce the verdict, awarded by a jury last week in a racial discrimination lawsuit, company lawyer Lester L. Jones said.

Pasadena civil rights attorney Dan Stormer, who has won several multimillion-dollar verdicts in racial discrimination cases, said the verdict was the largest a jury has awarded in Los Angeles in a race discrimination case involving a worker who wasn’t wrongfully fired.

Akintunde I. Ogunleye, who was born in Nigeria, filed the suit against Pitney Bowes, parent company of U.S. Mailing Systems, after he resigned from the subsidiary’s Van Nuys sales office in 1994.

Ogunleye alleged that during the four years he worked in Van Nuys, he was given less desirable sales territories and was subjected to racial slurs and harassment even though his sales broke company records.

Among the examples of workplace bigotry, Ogunleye testified during the trial, was an incident in which a co-worker addressed him, “Akintunde, ooga-booga, jungle-jungle.”

The co-worker, who is French Canadian, testified that what he really said was, “Bonjour, bonjour.”

Ogunleye testified that a supervisor repeatedly asked him, “Where are you from?” The same district manager told him after he’d taken a stress leave: “You’re no good. You’re like Darryl Strawberry. You’ve gone out on disability and now you have to prove yourself.”

Ogunleye then was assigned a smaller, less fertile sales territory, said his lawyer, Margaret S. Henry, of Santa Monica.

Jones, the company lawyer, said managers investigated the “ooga-booga” matter and concluded that it was a miscommunication between the employees, who both have thick accents.

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Pitney Bowes, based in Stamford, Conn., is best known for its postage meters and other mailing systems. Its worth is estimated at over $1 billion.

“The facts, in our view, don’t support the judgment,” Jones said Monday from the company’s headquarters. “There were a lot of things in our case that the jury just didn’t hear.”

Following a two-week trial, the jury deliberated about two days before awarding Ogunleye $2.6 million to cover economic losses and emotional distress. Jurors deliberated another day before handing down an award of $8.5 million in punitive damages.

“I think this shows that when a jury is convinced that someone has been discriminated against improperly, they’re willing to hand the plaintiff a lot of money and send the company a big message,” said Santa Monica attorney Paul L. Hoffman, former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California.

Eleanor Douglas, vice-president of human resources for U.S. Mailing Systems, said Pitney Bowes has won many awards for its diversity programs and is often included in lists of the best employers in the country.

“Pitney Bowes has a long-standing commitment to diversity,” Douglas said. She added that Ogunleye was a member of a companywide diversity focus group, representing the western division. He was also a diversity coordinator, she said.

“He was quite involved in diversity activities,” she said. Yet, he never filed any complaints with the company while he worked there, even though “he had every opportunity to bring forth any racial concerns or any racial complaints,” Douglas said.

“He didn’t raise issues of discrimination until he’d left the company and found employment elsewhere,” attorney Jones said. “I’m still hard pressed to know what the jury’s deliberations involved.”

“It is our belief that Mr. Ogunleye was treated fairly in all aspects of his employment. He had numerous opportunities to succeed,” Jones said. As for the issue of sales territory, Ogunleye’s sales sometimes were 400% over his quota, indicating not only his skill as a salesman but also that, as a relatively new employee, he had received plum assignments.

He also was a member of a committee that evaluated sales territories to make sure they were assigned fairly, Jones said.

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But Henry said Ogunleye served on the committees only briefly. “They were empty titles,” she said. “He was given no direction and no budget, yet he was blamed when minority hiring goals weren’t met.”

And, she said, the company failed to follow up on a 1993 report by minority workers that stated that racial harassment went unchecked in the districts.

“Although they do nice things at the corporate level and they put nice things in writing, when it comes down to actually hearing a complaint, they don’t want to,” Henry said.

She said that Ogunleye, whom she described as having “a raw wound in respect to the racial harassment,” urged her to settle the case so he wouldn’t have to relive his ordeal by testifying. But, she said, he changed his mind when he spotted one of his former district managers staring at him in a courthouse corridor and told Henry, “I want to go for it.”

“I could almost hear the ‘Rocky’ music playing in my ear,” Henry said, describing the supervisor’s stare as “the $11-million look.”