Case Review: Hotel sued for gender discrimination
In late summer of 1998, the Pierre Hotel had interviewed 37 applicants, 30 men and 7 women, for six banquet waiter positions. From that group, six men were hired. The woman presented evidence at the trial intended to show that the Pierre Hotel had hired very few women as banquet servers in the past, that they were treated differently in their interviews and were evaluated by different standards than their male counterparts, and that they had significantly more experience as banquet servers than the male applicants who received job offers.
Pierre Hotel presented evidence to show that the woman were treated similarly to male applicants in their interviews, that the successful applicants presented themselves better than the woman did in their interviews, and that the interviewer generally gave great weight to prior experience at the Pierre Hotel, even in positions other than banquet server. At the end of the trial, the jury returned a verdict for the Pierre Hotel.
Following the verdict, the attorney for the women and the attorney for hotel approached the jurors and talked with some of them. Juror Number 1 and Juror Number 6 told the attorney for the women that Juror Number 9, characterized by the attorney as a "corporate travel consultant," communicated her personal knowledge of the New York hotel industry to the jury. In particular, they said that Juror Number 9 told the jury that the hotels in which one of the women, Nancy Cocconi, had worked, including the Roosevelt Hotel, the Algonquin Hotel, and the Hilton Hotel, were not of the same quality as the Pierre Hotel. The jurors also discussed with the attorney for the women their level of familiarity with the hotel industry and the extent of their reliance on the information communicated by Juror Number 9.
The attorney for the women called these events to the district court's attention in a letter. Upon learning of the attorneys' conversations with jurors, the district court on February 28, 2001, ordered the parties to refrain from further contact with jurors without special permission from the district court. Soon thereafter, the attorney for Nancy Cocconi filed legal proceedings to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial on the grounds that extraneous, prejudicial information was communicated to the jury.
Based on the evidence presented and the pertinent legal precedents, the district court decided not to grant a new trial. Here, in part, is what the district
court said:
"Any statements made by Juror Number 9 regarding the relative quality of New York City hotels were not improper. Such information concerns the general reputations of well-known public places in New York City. [The four woman] could not have expected that no jurors had heard of these hotels or were aware of their relative degrees of prestige. The fact that Juror Number 9 was a "corporate travel consultant" does not change the nature of the information imparted."
Source: Cocconi v. Pierre Hotel, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8512
(United States District Court For The Southern District Of New York)
(June 26, 2001)
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Stephen Gibson, President, Ornel,Inc., www.hrlawindex.com, www.courtcases.net, www.nurselaw.net