Ex-Workers Sue Restaurant; New Law Firm Is Formed

Courthouse Confidential

Their jobs at the new Hurricane Grill and Wings restaurant in Hartsdale, N.Y., began innocently and positively enough.

The restaurant, part of a chain with about 40 locations nationwide, had just opened in November, and several of the black and Hispanic women who worked there said their supervisors had complimented them on their work. They had been front and center in the promotion leading up to the grand opening, they said.

But about a month into their employment, the women claim, things started to change. Their bosses unexpectedly cut their hours. They made racist and sexist comments. And eventually their names were left off the work schedules all together. They were fired.

Those are the allegations levied in a federal lawsuit filed this week by black and Hispanic women who said they were subjected to race and sex discrimination in their brief time working at Hurricane Grill and Wings before they were fired.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, does not specify an amount of money that the women are seeking. But it offers pointed accusations against the restaurant, saying the women were used to help promote the restaurant as diverse, only to be dropped shortly after it opened.

“What we think is they used these women to sort of help them get favorable publicity up in Hartsdale and throughout Westchester, as if they had a real commitment to diversity,” said Kenneth P. Thompson, the lawyer representing the women. “Once all that was done, they started letting them go.”

All 10 of the women said they were fired within a few months of the restaurant’s opening, according to the lawsuit.

Mr. Thompson said there were several other minority workers who were fired during that period. The black employees who were fired were replaced with whites, according to the lawsuit.

Walter Henry, an owner of the Hurricane Grill and Wings in Hartsdale, declined to comment.

The women said they heard many racist and sexist comments from employees at the restaurant.

When a black man asked a supervisor about his paycheck, according to the lawsuit, he was told, “You black guys can stay on welfare and in the projects, for all I care.”

Other comments they claim to have heard, according to the lawsuit, include:

“People like you belong in the back of the house.”

“You’re black. You can’t lose weight. Then you would have the shape of a white girl.”

The lawsuit, which names four owners and Hurricane’s parent company as defendants, said that Mr. Henry in particular had made racist and sexist comments.

Two of the plaintiffs, Nikita Johnson and Alexis Robles, claim in the lawsuit that Mr. Henry, who is white, said to them, among other things:

“Most black women aren’t attractive. They’re ugly, but you’re smokin’ hot.”

“I can’t stand here. I can’t concentrate because your breasts are just so big.”

The lawsuit blames Hurricane’s parent company for not providing any information on reporting workplace discrimination during an orientation session for new employees.

A New Law Firm Is Formed

Partners at two New York firms have joined a former assistant United States attorney for Brooklyn to form a new law firm, Levine Lee.

The firm was founded last week by Seth L. Levine, Kenneth E. Lee and Scott B. Klugman and will focus on complex civil litigation and white-collar and securities enforcement defense.

Mr. Levine comes from Foley & Lardner, where he was vice chairman of the firm’s securities litigation, enforcement and regulation practice group. Mr. Lee practiced most recently at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, and Mr. Klugman was the deputy chief of the business and securities fraud section of the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District.


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