Avis to Cut Off Outlets Accused in Race Discrimination Lawsuit

Avis Inc. has been instructed by its parent company to terminate five outlets owned by a franchisee who is accused in a class-action lawsuit of race discrimination.

In a statement released Tuesday by HFS Inc., executives said they had asked Avis to take legal action to end its relationship with John Dalton’s New Hanover Rent-a-Car, which operates rental centers in North and South Carolina. HFS executives also announced that they have retained a law firm to review the way Avis determines whether franchisees are complying with civil rights laws.

“We will not tolerate unlawful discriminatory practices of any kind,” HFS Chairman and Chief Executive Henry Silverman said in the statement.

Neither Avis executives nor Dalton returned calls seeking comment.

Parsippany, N.J.-based HFS recently acquired Avis for nearly $1 billion.

In their suit filed three weeks ago in a federal court in North Carolina, three African Americans alleged that they were denied vehicles at Dalton franchises on flimsy pretexts because of the color of their skin. One woman, who was 54 at the time, said rental agents told her she was too old to rent a car. Another woman who has since joined the lawsuit said she was told that the outlet was out of cars, even though she had passed several on the way in the door.

John Relman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that more than 100 people have now joined the class action.

In recent sworn declarations, several former New Hanover employees said Dalton instructed them to search for ways to deny cars to African Americans. For example, if the address on a black customer’s license wasn’t current, the customer was turned away, employees said.

The lawsuit alleges that for years Avis higher-ups knew about the spate of complaints lodged by aggrieved customers against Dalton’s franchises and did nothing about them.

Several former members of Avis’ Tulsa, Okla., customer service team, which fielded calls to the company’s 800 telephone number, recently said in sworn statements that they routinely forwarded the complaints to top managers at Avis’ headquarters in Garden City, N.Y.

One of those employees, Carolyn Williams, said that every week she sent three or four copies of complaints against Dalton’s franchises--many of them from African Americans--to the company’s customer service department in New York.

“We were always told by our supervisor that they were working on what to do about Dalton,” Williams said in an interview Tuesday. “But no one ever seemed to do anything about him.”

Another former employee, Carlett Wilson, said that when she mentioned the number of complaints against Dalton, a vice president said, “I know that we have a problem, but all we can do is keep documenting the problem.”