Vernon Jones and DeKalb County Liable For Discrimination Damages
Decatur Metro | April 2, 2010If I didn’t know better, I’d be arguing that this county known as “DeKalb” is really just a front for some sort of screwy non-profit that doles out money to lawyers.
From the AJC…
A federal court jury on Thursday awarded two former DeKalb County parks employees $185,000 in damages in the long-running racial discrimination case against the county.
In the culmination of a case that wound through the courts for six years, the jurors found that former DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones, Jones’ former executive assistant, Richard Stogner, former parks director Marilyn Boyd Drew and DeKalb County itself were all liable for damages.
The decision came after seven days of testimony before a jury of six — five white and one black — in a cased filed by four plaintiffs who claimed Jones, DeKalb’s first black CEO when elected in 2000, orchestrated a scheme to replace three top white managers in the parks department with blacks.
The case has been long and costly, with DeKalb spending more than $2.5 million in attorney fees for its defense.