Former UIW campus cop wins lawsuit

University ordered to pay $500,000 for sexual and racial harassment.

EXPRESS-NEWS STAFF WRITER
July, 2004

The University of the Incarnate Word has been ordered to pay $500,000 to a former campus police lieutenant who claimed university officials subjected her to sexual and racial harassment.

“I just wanted to tell my story. I asked for a jury trial and I got my day in court. I believe in the justice system,” said Carole Richardson, who left the campus Police Department in April 2002 and sued the university nearly a year later.

The award comes more than three years after the university settled a multimillion-dollar discrimination lawsuit with a group of housekeeping employees.

Richardson, the campus Police Department’s only female and black officer at the time she left the university, had asked the jury to award her $40,000 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages for a series of incidents that occurred over a 15-month period.

However, in a split verdict in which 10 jurors sided with the plaintiff, the jury awarded Richardson a total of $500,000 in damages.

Lawyers for the university wouldn’t comment on the case, but in a prepared statement the university said it planned to appeal the award.

“While the university is saddened by the results of this trial, we would like to express our thanks to the judicial system and the jury for their swift decision. We remain confident that, as an institution, the university acted professionally, ethically and appropriately at all times, both by handling complaints that Ms. Richardson lodged and also by taking swift action to resolve problems between colleagues,” the statement said.

Among numerous allegations, Richardson accused university officials of failing to investigate and halt numerous incidents in which colleagues used sexist and racist epithets when speaking about her.

Richardson also testified the tires on her vehicle were slashed, a sign bearing a racial epithet was placed on the vehicle and urine was splashed on her office door.

The jury did not agree with a claim that Roger Labat, the university’s vice president in charge of the Police Department, assaulted Richardson.

Jury foreman Mark Durst said the jury felt the university erred in not fully investigating the incidents. He added that the 10 members of the jury who voted to award damages did so to “send a message” to the university that the community would not tolerate such activity.

Jury member Christina Ramirez added, “It was a small amount (for damages), but it was a justified amount to show that the University of the Incarnate Word should have taken the sexual and racial harassment seriously.”

In April, 2001, the university agreed to pay $2.4 million in cash and scholarships to 18 Hispanic workers who claimed a supervisor called them “dumb Mexicans” and ordered them not to speak Spanish in the workplace.

In the settlement, the university also agreed to expand its policies forbidding discrimination and harassment.