A federal jury has awarded a former Georgetown University employee more than $1-million after finding that she had been sexually harassed by her boss, a man who is now the institution’s top business officer.
Monica Estes was the cash manager at Georgetown when she was fired, in December 1996. A jury in U.S. District Court in Washington this month awarded her $40,000 in compensatory damages, $50,000 in back pay, and $1-million in punitive damages. Jurors agreed with her contention that she had been forced to work in a sexually hostile environment, and that she had been fired as a result of her complaints about it.
Georgetown officials said they would seek “post-trial relief” and would appeal the verdict if necessary. “We’re very disappointed and surprised by the verdict,” said Julie Green Bataille, a university spokeswoman. “We don’t think the verdict was supported by the law or the testimony in the case.”
Ms. Estes’s supervisor, Earnest W. Porta Jr., was director of the university’s office of treasury services at the time. He is now acting vice president and treasurer of the university. Georgetown has taken no action against Mr. Porta. “We believe that he and the university acted in full compliance with the law,” said Ms. Bataille. Georgetown has had a sexual-harassment policy since 1995, and university officials do not believe that it was violated, she said.
In her complaint, filed in 1997, Ms. Estes said, among other things, that Mr. Porta had made sexually suggestive comments, and that she had been denied promotions and additional responsibilities because of her gender and because of a pregnancy and the subsequent birth of a child.
Ms. Estes, in a statement released by her lawyer’s firm, said: “I feel incredibly vindicated. A jury of my peers has done for me what Georgetown had steadfastly refused to do: state unequivocally that the behavior to which I was subjected was wrong, unacceptable, and illegal.”
The trial judge had dismissed two additional allegations made by Ms. Estes -- that Georgetown violated the Family and Medical Leave Act, and that university officials had intentionally inflicted emotional distress on her.
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 49, Issue 4, Page A29