Jury Awards $1 Million to Woman Who Was Told, ‘I Don’t Serve Black People’
Rose Wakefield was ignored by an attendant at a gas station in Beaverton, Ore., near Portland, as white customers who pulled in after her were served first, according to the lawsuit.
A woman in Oregon was awarded $1 million in damages this week after a jury found that she was discriminated against when a gas station attendant told her he didn’t “serve Black people.”
The decision by the jury in Multnomah County, which came after a four-day civil trial, included $550,000 in punitive damages.
Greg Kafoury, a lawyer for Rose Wakefield, the plaintiff, said his client felt “vindicated” and was looking forward to putting this case behind her.
“This company deserved to be publicly humiliated just as they had publicly humiliated my client by calling her a liar in court for four days when she had been telling the truth,” Mr. Kafoury said in an interview on Saturday.
