Mediaboss Marketing

The Associated Press Brandi Johnson, left, and her lawyer, Marjorie M. Sharpe, leave federal court in New York, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013, after a civil jury awarded $30,000 in punitive damages in addition to the $250,000 in compensatory damages that had been awarded last week. The jury said STRIVE East Harlem, a nonprofit employment organization, must pay $5,000 while one of its founders, Rob Carmona, owes $25,000 in punitive damages after an audio-tape played during a week-long trial showed he launched an N-word laced tirade against Johnson while she worked at STRIVE last year. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

By LARRY NEUMEISTER/Associated Press/September 4, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) The lawyer for a black woman whose hostile workplace claim against a black bosss N-word rant produced a $280,000 jury award says she hopes the case teaches society something.

Its the most offensive word in the English language, attorney Marjorie M. Sharpe said outside federal court in Manhattan after a jury Tuesday added $30,000 in punitive damages to go with a $250,000 compensatory damages award it imposed last week against STRIVE East Harlem and founder Rob Carmona.

Sharpe stood with her client, 38-year-old Brandi Johnson, after a jury of six men and two women determined Carmona owes her $25,000 and STRIVE $5,000 in additional damages in a case that put a legal microscope to the concept that the word that is a degrading slur when spoken by whites can be used without retribution and sometimes affectionately among blacks, even in the workplace.

Sharpe said the double standard had persisted far too long as people have tried to take the sting away from the N-word.

Johnson said she hopes the word now wont be tolerated no matter what your race is.

Carmona, a 61-year-old black man of Puerto Rican descent, had testified at the trial that he was dispensing tough love in language he faced from counselors who turned him from a drug addict with an arrest record into the creator of an often-praised organization that has helped nearly 50,000 hard-to-employ people find work since 1984.

Johnson had recorded the March 2012 tirade about inappropriate workplace attire and unprofessional behavior that was aired for the jury and described by both sides as the trials centerpiece. She said she cried for 45 minutes in the restroom afterward.

I was offended. I was hurt. I felt degraded. I felt disrespected. I was embarrassed, Johnson testified.

Read the original here:
Jury awards $280,000 in NY case over N-word abuse