Worker Awarded $2.2 Million Over Anti-Semitic Slurs

A former employee of Woodland Hills-based Litton Guidance and Control Systems who said he was harassed for years by supervisors who made anti-Semitic slurs has been awarded $2.2 million by a Van Nuys jury.

Jeffrey Graber, 41, said he was so tormented he developed digestive problems, went to the hospital thinking he’d had a heart attack and was eventually put on permanent disability because of severe depression.

Brandon Belote, a Litton spokesman, would not discuss the verdict.

Graber began working at the defense contractor’s Canoga Park photocopying and binding center in 1985. In an incident Graber termed typical of a pattern of conduct, he said a female supervisor had called him a “cheap Jew” for not contributing to a Christmas gift. And when he told co-workers about a good deal he had gotten on a watch, Graber said she told him he “must have Jewed him down on the price.”

He left the firm in October 1994 on full disability because of psychological problems caused by his supervisors’ abuse, according to his lawyer, James Leonard Brown.

The jury decided the three supervisors named in the suit--Richard Sweet, Joan Wood and Richard Miller--were personally guilty of harassment and were each liable for $10,000 in damages. It determined that Litton was also guilty and liable for $555,092 for loss of wages and for emotional distress and more than $1.6 million in punitive damages.

The two male supervisors denied making any racist comments. Wood, while admitting the comment about Graber’s haggling over a watch, claimed it was an isolated incident, according to Brown. They said they did not know Graber was Jewish.