A federal jury ordered logistics company Dimerco Express USA to pay more than $3 million after it found the company rescinded a job offer to a Black candidate because of his race.
According to the 2021 complaint in the case, Faulk v. Dimerco Express USA Corp., the plaintiff applied for an account executive position with Dimerco in 2019 and was initially offered the job. The company rescinded the offer, however, citing a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge the plaintiff received in 2014.
Dimerco later hired a White account executive who “had more significant criminal charges on his record” than the plaintiff, according to the complaint.
The plaintiff alleged that, following the hire, he spoke with a Dimerco HR director and asked why the company decided to hire a candidate with a more significant criminal history. He further alleged that the HR director told him that Dimerco “only wanted to hire whites” and that “whites could get in the door with customers that minorities could not.”
Law firm Barrett & Farahany, which represented the plaintiff, said on its website Friday that attorneys presented evidence at trial indicating that Dimerco “instituted a policy of ‘race-matching,’ hiring only Caucasians to cater to what it called the ‘Caucasian market.’”
The alleged evidence included internal emails stating that Dimerco would only hire White people between the ages 26 and 40 to be sales executives, according to Barrett & Farahany, and further evidence showed the company’s president vetoed the plaintiff’s hiring after discovering that the plaintiff was Black.
“Unfortunately, [the plaintiff] is one of several individuals who have approached our firm in recent months and reported that companies who have come to the United States, primarily from Asia, have instituted policies in wholesale disregard of civil rights laws protecting minorities, women, the disabled, or the LGBTQ+ community,” Amanda Farahany, the law firm’s founder, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Dimerco did not immediately respond to an HR Dive request for comment.
The breakdown of the jury award includes $90,000 for net loss of wages and benefits; $150,000 to compensate for past emotional pain and mental anguish; an additional $150,000 for future emotional pain and mental anguish; and $3 million in punitive damages. Jury awards in employment discrimination cases are sometimes reduced in order to comply with statutory caps.
Employers that illegally discriminate against job candidates could be on the hook for eye-popping payouts in the event that subsequent lawsuits go before a jury. Last month, a federal jury ordered transportation company Werner Enterprises to pay more than $36 million to a deaf job applicant to whom the company allegedly denied a truck driving position because of his disability.
