By Jeff Harrell
Staten Island Advance (New York)
Copyright 2007 Advance Publications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The city's lawyer says they were linked in effort to oust former division head on Island Staten Island's first female firefighter and the current borough commander were "co-conspirators" motivated by financial and professional gain to oust a former division commander, a lawyer for the city charged yesterday.
In closing arguments of Judith Beyar's $10 million discrimination lawsuit against the city, city counsel James Lemonedes questioned the relationship between the 51-year-old retired firefighter, formerly of New Brighton and one of 11 females who broke the Fire Department's gender barrier in 1982, and Assistant Chief Thomas Haring, borough commander of Staten Island.
"She went to school with Haring's wife. They were friends. He was her ally," Lemonedes said, accusing the pair of conspiring in 2001 to get Robert Mosier booted as commander of Division 8 in Concord.
"She knew how to set somebody up," he charged.
Lemonedes said Ms. Beyar "attacked" Mosier when she filed an internal Fire Department EEO complaint and a subsequent federal human rights application charging that the then-division commander discriminated against her because she is a woman.
Ms. Beyar, 51, of Rockville Centre, L.I., accused Mosier of denying her request for a "24-spot" work schedule consisting of one day on and three days off. Mosier also rejected her as a chauffeur by selecting a male firefighter to drive him to and from fires, and denied overtime pay by crossing Ms. Beyar's name off a log sheet.
The complaint, which included several incidents charging that Mosier promoted "a hostile working environment" for the female firefighter, also detailed a photograph of a staff party that Ms. Beyar and her 6-year-old daughter found hanging in the firehouse kitchen in December 2000.
When her daughter pointed out Ms. Beyar in the picture and asked, "What's that between your legs?" Ms. Beyar discovered that someone had drawn "an arrow or a penis" toward her crotch area.
"A picture that you never saw," Lemonedes pointed out to jurors.
Haring, Lemonedes noted, wanted Mosier out so he could be considered for a promotion to division commander.
"Haring was invested in the outcome of this trial," Lemonedes said, adding, "In September 2001, Haring was promoted to division commander in another division."
Ms. Beyar's attorney Thomas F. Bello countered that while Lemonedes' conspiracy argument "is good for novels," the underlying implications drawn by the city attorney served as an illicit perpetuation of the sexual discrimination Ms. Beyar is fighting.
"He didn't say it, so I'll say it ... she was sleeping with Haring, that's the implication. Do you see the mind-set?" Bello asked the jury.
The jury of five women and three men continues deliberations this morning in Brooklyn Federal Court. U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Bianco is presiding.
