Ex-Manager Granted New Trial on Bias Charges

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed a laid-off manager to retry his age-discrimination suit against Mitsubishi Electronics with evidence of an executive’s alleged order to get rid of managers over 40.

None of the justices voted to grant a hearing on Mitsubishi’s appeal of a lower-court ruling granting a new trial to George O’Mary, a former customer service and computer manager for the company’s personal computer division in Cypress.

O’Mary was 45 when he went to work for Mitsubishi Electronics of America in March 1981. He was laid off in November 1990 when the company shut down its money-losing personal computer division. His lawyer, Dirk Bruinsma, said nearly all the managers who lost their jobs were over 40, the age at which arbitrary discrimination is banned by law.

His suit seeks $750,000 in economic losses, plus punitive damages.

To prove intentional discrimination, O’Mary tried to use a statement by Robert Jones, another laid-off manager and plaintiff in the suit who died before trial.

Jones said he was summoned to a managers’ meeting in 1990 by Herb Craft, vice president in charge of program development for Mitsubishi Electronics America. He said Craft quoted a man named Mr. Ihara, a senior managing director of the Japanese parent company, Mitsubishi Electronics, as having made a statement “about getting rid of managers who were over 40 and replacing them with younger, more aggressive managers.”

Jones also quoted Craft as saying the president of the parent company, Mr. Kawasaki, agreed with Ihara.

Orange County Superior Court Judge James Poole had ruled the statement inadmissible, calling it “hearsay of the worst order.” He also said the statement’s value as evidence was outweighed by its unfair prejudice to Mitsubishi. The jury found no discrimination.

But the 4th District Court of Appeal overruled Poole last November and granted a new trial, saying the evidence was at “the very core of the case.”

Though the statement was hearsay--a secondhand report of statements by others--it was admissible because Ihara, Kawasaki and Craft were all authorized to speak for Mitsubishi on the issue, said Presiding Justice David Sills in the 3-0 ruling.

Sills said jurors who heard the statement might “conclude there was, in fact, an articulated company policy to base layoff decisions on an individual’s age and not ability to do the job.”

D. Barclay Edmundson, a lawyer for Mitsubishi, said the company denies that any such policy existed. He also said Craft, the vice president quoted by Jones, denied that he or anyone else at the meeting made any such statement.