Jury Awards $1 Million in Eddie Bauer Case

A federal jury on Thursday awarded $1 million to three young black men who accused the Eddie Bauer chain of “consumer racism” for detaining them on suspicion of shoplifting and forcing one man to take off his shirt.

The jury of four whites and three blacks in Greenbelt, Md., found that the young men were falsely imprisoned and defamed by store officials and that the outdoor-clothing company negligently supervised its security guards.

However, the jury did not find that the civil rights of 18-year-old Alonzo Jackson were violated by being forced to remove his shirt.

The jury deliberated seven hours over two days before awarding Jackson $850,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. His friends, Rasheed Plummer, 18, and Marco Cunningham, 20, each were awarded $75,000.

They had sought $85 million.

“I’m happy we won, but it doesn’t give you your dignity back,” Jackson said outside the courthouse.

Eddie Bauer attorney Gerald Ivey said the company was “gratified there was no finding of racial discrimination.”

Lawyers for Eddie Bauer said the company’s antidiscrimination policy bars unfair treatment of minority employees and customers, and its officials have apologized in writing to the plaintiffs.

Eddie Bauer is a division of international retailer Spiegel Inc. Spiegel shares fell 6 cents to close at $7.06 on Nasdaq.

The lawyers instead blamed security guard Robert Sheehan, who they said acted on his own and in violation of store policy.

The three men, high school students at the time of the 1995 incident, claimed they were unnecessarily stopped and held by security guards as they left the Eddie Bauer warehouse store in Fort Washington, Md.

Sheehan asked if Jackson had purchased the shirt he was wearing. When Jackson couldn’t immediately produce a receipt--he had bought the shirt at the store a day earlier--Sheehan asked him to take it off and leave, according to their lawsuit.

Sheehan interrogated Jackson, despite being told by a store cashier that Jackson had bought the shirt from her. Plummer and Cunningham were detained for about 10 minutes while Jackson was questioned, the lawsuit claimed.

When Cunningham protested, he was told: “Sit down or I’ll lock you up,” his lawyer, Ed Connor, told the jury.

Jackson returned later that night with the receipt and retrieved the shirt.

The teenagers sued the Redmond, Wash.-based store chain to prevent a repeat of such “consumer racism,” said Donald Temple, the lawyer for Jackson and Plummer.