By Jeff Harrell
Staten Island Advance (New York)
Copyright 2007 Advance Publications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Staten Island’s first female firefighter said the FDNY created such a hostile working environment, she was forced to leave the job she loved.
Judith Beyar fought back with a $10 million civil lawsuit.
Attorneys for the city countered that the former New Brighton resident “manufactured” the charges.
Yesterday, a Brooklyn federal court jury of five women and three men ruled the Fire Department did not discriminate against the 51-year-old Ms. Beyar because she is a woman.
The panel dismissed her claims that she endured harassment at Division 8 in Concord because she is a woman, and that the FDNY retaliated with adverse employment action after she filed complaints internally with the department and the state Division of Human Rights, and forced her to retire earlier than she had planned.
Ms. Beyar, formerly of New Brighton and now a resident of Rockville Centre, L.I., was stunned as the jury foreman declared, “your honor, no,” to each of the three claims.
“I’m shocked,” Ms. Beyar said outside the courtroom following the verdict. “I thought the evidence was there.
Still, “I’m not surprised at the verdict,” she added. “Everything has always been swept under the carpet. There will never be fairness on the work force until these issues are addressed.”
The eight jurors declined to speak with reporters after discussing the verdict with attorneys.
Appeal is Planned
Ms. Beyar’s attorney, Thomas F. Bello of West Brighton, said the jury indicated that the evidence presented during five full days of trial testimony “did not rise” to the legal level of U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Bianco’s instructions.
Bello said he plans to appeal the verdict and ask for a new trial.
“The judge made some pretrial rulings that eliminated a lot of evidence, a lot of testimony and witnesses,” Bello said. “By eliminating that evidence the jury did not get the full picture of what she was going through.”
James Lemonedes, senior counsel with the Labor and Employment Division at the New York City Law Department, thanked jurors as they waited for an elevator after leaving the eighth-floor courtroom.
“We believe that justice was done, and that the jury got it right,” said Lemonedes, who along with co-counsel Lisa Griffith defended the city against the lawsuit.
In a statement released later yesterday afternoon, Lemonedes called Ms. Beyar’s claims of discrimination and a hostile work environment “manufactured,” and said the jury “blocked her attempt to profit at taxpayers’ expense.”
The bulk of Ms. Beyar’s gender discrimination claims against the Fire Department involved former Division 8 Commander and Deputy Chief Robert Mosier.
Her Bias Claims
Mosier, she said, denied her request for a “24-spot” work schedule consisting of one day on and three days off. Mosier also rejected her bid to serve as the division commander’s chauffeur to fires and other department-related emergency responses. And he nixed Ms. Beyar’s overtime pay by crossing out her name on a log sheet.
Testifying Monday, Mosier said Ms. Beyar, who was one of the 11 female firefighters to break the FDNY’s gender barrier in 1982, was best utilized as a secretary at Division 8, where she also served as the deputy chief’s liaison with the Staten Island borough president’s office and notified Island fire officials of functions they needed to attend.
“I depended on her to do the typing. I could think about a report I wanted and she’d type it up,” Mosier told the jury.
“She had to try to make the Fire Department look good, the division look good. That was one of her functions.”
But Mosier said Ms. Beyar didn’t have the “instincts” to drive him to and from fires. When the deputy chief needed a chauffeur, a male firefighter who had been injured and assigned to light duty at the time was selected over Ms. Beyar.
Objectionable Jokes
Bello said the deputy chief’s snub and condescending attitude toward Ms. Beyar made her “the butt of their jokes” around the firehouse.
Once, when Ms. Beyar took her then-6-year-old daughter to the firehouse, the little girl found a photograph of her mother at a staff party hanging in the kitchen.
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” near her crotch area.
Last week, Assistant Chief Thomas Haring, borough commander for Staten Island, told jurors he confronted the male firefighter responsible for the drawing.
“I believe it was in the context of, ‘What were you thinking?’” Haring testified.
Things around the Concord firehouse only got worse for the pioneering firefighter after she filed an internal EEO complaint with the FDNY in June 2001. Ms. Beyar later filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights in March 2002.
Although as a single mother rearing three children she couldn’t afford to leave the Fire Department, Ms. Beyar said she got fed up with the on-the-job harassment and retired in August 2005.
Currently unemployed, Ms. Beyar has since been in therapy to try to get past the “humiliation” she says she incurred during the last few years of her career.
“I’m just trying to get healthy mentally,” Ms. Beyar said, adding that she has no plans in the near future to go back to work.
But Ms. Beyar emphasized that yesterday’s verdict sent a stinging message to others in the Fire Department who might find themselves in a similar position pitted against what she calls “The Brotherhood.”
“People don’t want to complain,” Ms. Beyar said, “because (fire officials) don’t address it.”