Staff Report
Published Nov. 4, 2009
Six workers at a Nucor Corp. steel plant in Arkansas have been awarded $200,000 each for compensatory and punitive damages after a jury found the company guilty of racial hostility toward black employees.
The case bears a striking resemblance to a class-action lawsuit filed by workers at the company’s Berkeley County plant earlier this year.
A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas unanimously determined that the Charlotte, N.C.-based company is guilty of racial hostility against black employees.
The jury found Nucor guilty of supervisor racial hostility and co-worker racial hostility at its Blytheville, Ark., plant, based in part on the acts of Dan DiMicco, who is currently the CEO of Nucor. DiMicco was the general manager of the Blytheville plant at the time that many of the racial offenses occurred, the court said. The six plaintiffs were each granted $100,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $1.2 Million.
Wiggins, Childs, Quinn & Pantazis, the Birmingham, Ala., law firm that represented the plaintiffs in Arkansas, is also representing workers in the case in South Carolina. Derfner Altman & Wilborn of Charleston is assisting the Birmingham firm on the case.
“Given what the six Arkansas plaintiffs had to endure since their suit was filed in 2003 — not to mention the indignities they suffered which led to the case in the first place — any one of them will tell you this victory is about a lot more than money,” lead attorney Robert L. Wiggins Jr. said in a statement. “In the bigger picture, it’s about getting Nucor to treat its black employees with the same decency and respect as they give other employees.”
Racial acts presented as evidence included lynching re-enactments, racial slurs broadcast over the plant’s radio system, portrayals of black employees as monkeys and a variety of other racial insults. Nucor also sold items bearing confederate flags and the Nucor logo in its company store.
All current or former black employees of the Nucor Berkeley plant in South Carolina since Dec. 8, 1999, are now part of a class-action suit, Brown v. Nucor, which will be tried in Charleston. Soon after the class-action status was approved for the lawsuit, the company said it has been the target of overeager attorneys.
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