A Memphis man was awarded nearly $12 million by a jury after he sued his former employer in a racial and age discrimination lawsuit.
“I just knew I had to do something because of the situation,” said Victor Boddie, 64, who was fired from the Chemours Company, formerly Dupont Chemicals in North Memphis, for taking a shower while working as a mechanic.
“I had so many various jobs at Dupont, I started off as a systems operator, an operator and my last job there was a maintenance mechanic,” Boddie said of his employment tenure.
Boddie was hired by the company in 1980, and he last worked at Chemours as a mechanic when on a cold Feb. 4, 2019, he had been working outside at the chemical plant and felt he needed to warm up with a shower, but that is where his nearly four-decade stint with the company ended abruptly.
“The reason he was terminated was because he took the shower and his supervisor saw him in the shower and said, ‘You’re out of your work area,’ but Mr. Boddie’s work area was the entire plant, because he was a mechanic,” said Ralph Gibson, Boddie’s attorney.
Boddie says he felt terrible for being fired for something as trivial as taking a shower.
“When I got escorted out of the gate, I was just embarrassed,” Boddie said.
Soon after the shock of being fired wore off, Boddie started thinking, and he realized there was more to his termination, because he says he was often treated differently on the job leading up to his termination.
“I was during that time, the oldest mechanic, and there weren’t that many Black mechanics out there. We had a safety meeting every morning and when work was passed out, they usually gave it to the younger mechanics which really threw me for a loop,” Boddie said.
Just as Boddie started to connect the dots that something was awry with his firing, he hired attorney Ralph Gibson to help him figure it out.
“The employer’s alleged nondiscriminatory reason for terminating the employee was actually a pretext for some type of discrimination, and in this case, the basis of discrimination was so ridiculous that alone was a part of the jury’s verdict,” Gibson said.
On July 3, 2019, Boddie filed a lawsuit against Chemours Company for his termination alleging racial and age discrimination. The lawsuit alleges Chemours violated the Age, Discrimination Employment Act, which prohibits age discrimination against people 40 and older. The lawsuit also alleged Chemours violated Section 1981 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
Gibson says the company also failed to do any sort of investigation prior to letting Boddie go.
“They didn’t do an investigation, they didn’t even interview Mr. Boddie before they fired him, they didn’t do any type of investigation that you would do especially for an employee that’s been out there for this long,” said Gibson.
In June, a jury felt Boddie was given a raw deal and agreed Chemours fired him unjustly, awarding the 64-year-old nearly $12 million in damages.
“Compensatory damages were back pay, front pay, and emotional damages, and the jury found $1.763 million for what they did to Mr. Boddie. Then the second phase was punitive damages, and they found $10 million in punitive damages,” Gibson said.
“To have that trial and let everything come out in the open, that’s why I felt vindicated,” Boddie said of the jury award.
The fight is not over for Boddie, because Gibson says Chemours filed a motion for a new trial and will try to appeal the jury’s decision, but both Gibson and Boddie are determined to fight to keep the nearly $12 million jury award intact.
“We feel very confident, the jury did what was fair, and we don’t feel the jury’s verdict is going to get overturned,” said Gibson.
Boddie hopes his lawsuit sends a message to his former employer and other companies, which is to treat people fairly and justly.
“To me, that’s the bottom line: Be fair to everyone,” Boddie said.
Atlanta Black Star sought comment form Chemours Company on the multi-million-dollar jury verdict but has not received a response.
