White Starbucks Manager Fired Amid Furor Over Racism Wins $25 Million
Laura Carlin Mattiacci, a lawyer for Ms. Phillips, said she and her client were “very pleased” with the unanimous verdict, adding that “she proved by ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that punitive damages were warranted” under the New Jersey law.
A Starbucks spokeswoman declined to comment.
At the time of the episode, Ms. Phillips oversaw about 100 stores in Philadelphia, South Jersey, Delaware and parts of Maryland. She had been promoted to the job in 2011 after what she called her “exemplary performance” in six years as a district manager in Ohio.
Ms. Phillips said in the suit that Starbucks, as part of its damage-control effort after the arrests, had sought to punish her and other white employees in and around Philadelphia even if they had not been involved in the events that led to the police being called.
Ms. Phillips said she had thrown herself into the company’s efforts to restore its credibility and had sought to support hourly workers, organizing managers to staff stores and cover for employees who were scared to run a gantlet of protesters.
Amid the image-burnishing campaign, Ms. Phillips said one of her superiors, a Black woman, told her to suspend a white manager who oversaw stores in Philadelphia, though not the one in Rittenhouse Square, because of allegations that he had engaged in discriminatory conduct — allegations that Ms. Phillips said she knew to be untrue.
Source: The New York Times
