Plaintiff Wins in Retaliation Suit
Jury awards Stanford professor $500K for being fired after complaining about 'Girl Friday' role
The Recorder
March 31, 2000
By Sukhjit Purewal, Recorder Staff Writer
SAN JOSE — A federal jury deliberated just half a day on Thursday before awarding more than $500,000 to Colleen Crangle, a former scientist who claimed she had been fired by Stanford University Medical School for complaining she has been sexually discriminated against.
"This has been an incredibly hard fight for Colleen," said her attorney Dan Siegel after the verdict. "The jurors saw through the smokescreens and lies of Stanford."
The verdict is not only cause for joy for Crangle, but also for 31 former and current female employees at Stanford who have filed discrimination complaints with the U.S. Department of Labor. The school could lose federal funding if the Department of Labor finds the claims are true.
"Stanford thought they could slam-dunk this case," said Siegel's c-counsel, Anne Butterfield Weills. "They thought they could win this case and intimidate the rest of the women who have filed complaints with the DOL."
The jury awarded Crangle $200,000 in punitive damages and $100,000 in compensatory damages. Weills noted that the maximum combined punitive and compensatory damages the jury could award was $300,000. Siegel had asked for a 50-50 split. Jurors also awarded Crangle the $241,000 Siegel had asked for in back and future pay and counseling expenses.
A couple of jurors returned to wish Crangle their best, and one woman gave her a hug. One man said, "You have a nice future."
Defense attorney Greta Schnetzler of San Francisco's Gordon & Rees said the defense was obviously disappointed with the verdict. She said her team plans to analyze the case and decide whether to appeal.
"They said they went on the documents," Schnetzler said, having just briefly talked with the jurors.
Crangle claimed that she was fired in March 1997 from the Section of Medical Informatics, or SMI, because she had made complaints about being reduced to a "girl Friday" o Larry Fagan, another senior research scientist with more experience. Further, when she took he concerns to Edward Shortliffe, associate dean of the medical school, he told her to accept the conditions or leave.
Stanford had argued they had fired her because of a lack of funding.
Crangle's attorneys, Weills, an Oakland solo, and Siegel, of Oakland's Siegel & Yee, are married. Yet their manner gave no hint that they are a couple; Weills said both sides decided it was unnecessary to reveal that information to the jurors.
In his closing, he accused Stanford of having "played fast and loose with the truth."
He advised the jurors to "trust the e-mails" chronicling the ongoing communication Crangle had with Fagan, Shortliffe and others. One particular e-mail that the jurors may have grown weary of seeing was what Siegel called the "smoking gun." It is from laboratory director Mark Musen in response to an e-mail he received from Crangle complaining about discrimination. The e-mail read: "I'd like to see what options we have right now simply to lay her off."
Defense attorneys Schnetzler and Michael Lucey of Gordon & Rees shared time questioning witnesses. In closing arguments, Lucey didn't address what Siegel alleged were inconsistencies in deposition statements and testimony by Stanford employees and instead concentrated on describing Crangle's misperceptions and the university's efforts to help her.
"There were 70 people in the lab and not one came before you to corroborate what Dr. Cangle told you," Lucey told jurors. "To believe what Dr. Cangle told you — you have to believe that everyone else lied to you."
Because Crangle was new to the staff, Lucey said it was not unusual that Shortliffe would want Fagan, who had more experience, to act in a supervisory role to Crangle. Crangle took that to be discriminatory since she held the same title as Fagan and didn't think she needed to be supervised.
A key moment in the trial came on Monday when U.S. District Judge James Ware allowed Dr. Frances Conley, a Stanford neurosurgeon, to testify for the plaintiff over defense attorney Michael Lucey's vehement objections.
Conley, one of the first neurosurgeons in the nation, has been a lightening rod for women across the nation who claim sexual discrimination or harassment on campuses. She took a year off from Stanford in 1991, though she since has returned, to speak out publicity about the problem. Conley authored a book entitled Walking Out On The Boys, in which she describes inappropriate behavior of male colleagues towards females in the operating room.
Lucey protested, saying that Conley's testimony was irrelevant to the matter at hand. "In a discrimination case like this, evidence of other acts of wrongdoing is inadmissible and highly prejudicial."
Ware limited Conley's testimony to the public statements she had made about pervasive sexual discrimination and harassment in the university's medical school and not her personal experiences. He told the jurors he was allowing the limited testimony to help them decide whether "there were complaints that should have caused the staff to respond."
Conley described the medical school as being a place where women weren't considered equals to their male counterparts and that ambitious women were ostracized.
"There are still problems of gender inequality at Stanford," Conley said.
Female discrimination is so pervasive, Conley said, that she wasn't surprised when the guards who work in the Northern District federal courthouse asked her is she was looking for the "Stanford Girls" trial.
As Conley was leaving the courtroom, Ware told her "I'll have a talk with the boys downstairs."
Crangle's husband, Garth Crangle, brought the couple's two children, Graeme, 9, and Blair, 5, with a hand-held video game and oversized teddy bear in tow, to the closing arguments.
"I wanted them to see history in the making," Garth Crangle said at the end of the day. "I think we are going to win."
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