XEROX LACKS ETHICS PAYS-UP $ 804,000.00 TO EMPLOYEE ……

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XEROX LACKS ETHICS PAYS-UP $ 804,000.00 TO SETTLE LAWSUIT WITH CURRENT EMPLOYEE

Xerox Corporation Employee Wins $804,214 in Employment Claim for Unlawful Retaliation
NEWARK, N.J.,- On April 6, 2011, at the Superior court of New Jersey, a jury of five women and three men issued a verdict awarding $804,214 in compensatory damages to Hope Bailey-Rhodeman in a race discrimination and retaliation case against Xerox Corp., a Norwalk, CT-based global leader in business processes and document management with more than 130,000 employees.

The trial was held in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Essex County, before a jury and the Hon. Francine A. Schott, J.S.C.  The complaint was filed on November 13, 2007.  After jury selection, the trial began on January 26, 2011, and lasted ten weeks.

Bailey-Rhodeman, who still works at Xerox, brought her claims against the company as well as one of its vice presidents, Larry Lauver, under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which prohibits discrimination and retaliation in the workplace.  An African-American female, Bailey-Rhodeman claimed that she had suffered retaliation when she had made an internal complaint of race and gender discrimination. 

At the time of her complaint, Bailey-Rhodeman was a sales manager for Xerox in its Morris Plains, NJ location.  She has worked for the company since 1987, with a successful career spanning nearly 20 years.  After a series of promotions, in 1997, Bailey-Rhodeman was promoted to sales manager as part of Xerox’s Mid-Atlantic Public Sector Organization (MAPSO), leading a team of 10 sales representatives who specialized in selling equipment and services to state and local government customers. 

Bailey-Rhodeman was consistently the highest ranked sales manager in MAPSO, and was frequently one of the most highly ranked sales managers for the country.  In 2005, she was the second highest ranked Xerox Sales Manager in the country.

All this changed in the summer of 2006, when Bailey-Rhodeman made an internal complaint to Xerox Human Resources, complaining that other managers were bullying her because she was an African-American female.  Her immediate supervisor, Larry Lauver, learned of the complaint, and told Bailey-Rhodeman that he was angry at her for making him look bad, telling her "now you did it."  Lauver then launched a retaliatory investigation of Bailey-Rhodeman. 

Bailey-Rhodeman had always received excellent performance reviews as a sales manager, and had never been disciplined for anything her in 10 years in the job.  Suddenly Lauver was accusing her of violating Xerox policy and engaging in bad management practices.  Lauver proceeded to interview everyone on Bailey-Rhodeman’s team, in an effort that one employee described as trying to find "dirt" on her.  In response to this blatant retaliation, on November 2, 2006, Bailey-Rhodeman threatened to sue Lauver and Xerox.

Without being interviewed, or even being told the specifics of the accusations against her, Bailey-Rhodeman was suspended by Lauver on November 10, 2006, who accused her of committing an unspecified "policy violation."  During her subsequent interview by Lauver and HR personnel, Bailey-Rhodeman was still not told the charges against her, and was given no opportunity to respond to most of the allegations made.  Three weeks later, on December 7, 2006, Bailey-Rhodeman was told she was being fired, but Xerox offered to pay her 12 weeks severance, if she would agree to quit.  She refused, and repeated her threat to sue the company.

In response Xerox back-pedaled, and on December 22, 2006, Bailey-Rhodeman was told by Senior Vice President Michael Zimmer that she was being removed from her sales manager job, but could accept instead a reassignment to a sale position where she would be stripped of all supervisory responsibilities.  Otherwise, she would be fired.  The reassignment was a demotion, which would result in a significant loss in pay.  Nonetheless, without any job prospects, Bailey-Rhodeman took the reassignment, but continued to challenge the demotion.  Bailey-Rhodeman, in fact, continues to work at Xerox to this day.

Internally at Xerox, and without any legal assistance, Bailey-Rhodeman continued to press Senior Vice President Zimmer and Human Resources Vice President Barbara Koontz for a justification or explanation for the action taken against her.  In August 2007, in an unprecedented move, Koontz admitted the charges against Bailey-Rhodeman could not be sustained, and issued a revised disciplinary notice to remove the charges from her personnel file.  Nonetheless, Xerox stood by its action, claiming that Bailey-Rhodeman had interfered with the investigation.  The alleged "interference," was that Bailey-Rhodeman had left a voicemail accusing a fellow manager of discrimination — the same manager she had complained about to Xerox HR in the summer of 2006.  Neither of these complaints were investigated by anyone at Xerox.

After being demoted to the sales position, Bailey-Rhodeman lost approximately $100,000 per year in sales commissions.  Her territory was split between two white males.At trial, Bailey-Rhodeman challenged her demotion as being in retaliation for her complaints of discrimination.  Witnesses who were interviewed during Lauver’s investigation of Bailey-Rhodeman testified that Lauver bullied them during the interviews, and was trying to gather evidence to justify firing her.  (In fact, pretrial disclosure revealed Xerox had searched through Bailey-Rhodeman’s expense reports to find discrepancies, but came up empty handed.)  The jury found in Bailey-Rhodeman’s favor on her retaliation claim, and specifically found both Xerox and Lauver liable for the retaliatory demotion.  The jury awarded Bailey-Rhodeman $488,088 in lost past income, and $316,126 in lost future income.Bailey-Rhodeman’s attorneys will file post-trial motions for prejudgment interest, legal costs and attorneys’ fees, which will add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the judgment.

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April 13, 2011 at 10:29 AM