Prime Trucking agrees to $409,753 settlement

by Paul Schreiber

SBJ Reporter

pschreiber@sbj.net

Prime Inc. has agreed to pay a total of $409,753 in damages, workers' compensation claims and attorney fees as settlement for claims from three female trainees who charged the company with sexual harassment from three of its male driver-trainers.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced the settlement of the employment discrimination lawsuit. Prime Inc. is a 24-year-old trucking firm that operates more than 3,100 trucks and more than 4,250 trailers from its Springfield headquarters at 2740 N. Mayfair.

Cynthia Huffman, Virginia King and Willa Burke were represented in the suit by Jefferson City law firm Roger G. Brown & Associates. Huffman will receive $85,000, King will receive $50,000 and Burke will receive $5,000.

The settlement also requires Prime to pay an additional $62,500 to resolve pending workers' compensation claims filed by Huffman ($37,500) and Burke ($25,000) against the company based on alleged assaults.

Brown & Associates will receive $141,533 in attorney fees and $12,571 in expenses. Hattiesburg, Miss.-based Montague, Pittman & Varnado, which also represented Huffman, will receive $53,149.

The final settlement, which was approved June 23 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Southern Division, also requires sexual harassment training over a three-year period for all Prime employees and independent contractors, including its over-the-road truck drivers.

Initial suits

The commission initially filed its suit on July 24, 2001, said Bob Johnson, EEOC regional attorney. The suit alleged that the sexual harassment and sexual assault of Huffman, King and Burke by the three Prime truck driver-trainers occurred in separate incidents dating as far back as 1997, while driving cross country.

The truck driver-trainer involved in the Huffman incident was Abel Lormand; Burke's trainer was Samuel Turner, Brown said. The trainer involved in the King incident was not named as a defendant, because King "did not hire us in time enough for the claim to be filed against him. The statute of limitations would have run out," Brown said.

Each case went to trial and jury verdicts were reached in connection with all three cases, said Steve Crawford, general counsel for Prime. "Two of them were defense verdicts, where the plaintiffs recovered nothing. In one case, the plaintiff (Huffman) recovered $85,000. Prime appealed and so did the EEOC and so did the plaintiffs, each on their respective grounds," he said.

Rebecca Stith, senior trial attorney for EEOC, added: "(The jury) found in favor of Prime as to Virginia King, who only had a Title VII (employment discrimination) claim in the EEOC. And as to Willa Burke, they found in favor of Prime (against) her and against the EEOC as to the sexual harassment."

For the appeal, the judge ordered all claimants the three women and EEOC be consolidated into one trial.

"It was difficult to try because we were actually trying and defending four separate lawsuits, and our concern was being able to keep the facts of each one separate and clear, particularly with the jury," said JoAnne Spears Jackson, attorney for Shughart Thomson Kilroy PC, which defended Prime.

Crawford said the $409,753 settlement is a little misleading, as more than half of the settlement is going to pay attorney fees and expenses.

"They were seeking millions of dollars," Crawford said of the initial suits by the three trainees.

Said Jackson: "The whole case was just getting prohibitively expensive to defend, because the EEOC just seemed to be determined to press some kind of case against Prime. They just never ran out of resources, and we didn't think they ever would. It seemed to be a better business decision to go ahead and compromise the claims even though we felt like we had won at the trial level."

Johnson agreed with Crawford that the amount the EEOC and the claimants were seeking was above the final settlement.

"I really think the resolution of the case shows the importance of a company having firm rules prohibiting sexual harassment and training their employees as to those rules," Johnson said.

Prime has and has had a zero tolerance regarding sexual harassment, said Crawford, adding that none of the driver-trainers involved in the cases are still with Prime.