About Current Cases

We had very little specific interest in glass ceiling litigation when we started DataLine. Three cases quickly changed that: Nancy Ezold's lawsuit against the law firm of Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen; Norman Drake's lawsuit against Lockheed; and Frances Conley's story (which has not yet become a lawsuit) at Stanford University.

Glass celiing lawsuits reveal enormous amounts of detail. This is the main reason that most such cases get settled, usually with stringent confidentiality agreements. There are very few published employment cases in general, and almost no published glass ceiling cases. It is not at all clear to us what the overall impact of these cases has been. There are reasons to suspect that this impact could in fact be negative, because of the way universities and corporations retaliate against the plaintiffs. This has a chilling effect on others in the organization. Also, there is little evidence that organizations improve following employment litigation. Still, it is clear that there are times when individuals -- such as Nancy Ezold and Norman Drake - feel they simply had no choice but to sue. Litigation is distressing and destructive - emotionally, professionally, and financially -- but the alternative of loss of self-respect is even more expensive.

Studying glass ceiling litigation also reveals that, contrary to common belief, the cost of litigation is not a great deterrent to many organizations. Lawyers representing over forty plaintiffs against Lockheed estimate that the company has spent as much as $50 million dollars on legal expenses; State Farm Insurance spent over $60 million dollars on outside attorneys alone fighting a discrimination lawsuit; the University of California recently fought strenuously in the California State Senate to oppose a bill that would have required the Regents to disclose how much the UC system spends each year fighting discrimination claims -- all we know is that the total is in the tens of millions.

One result of this intransigence is that the litigation is usually financially ruinous to the plaintiffs. Typically, plaintiffs' attorneys work on a contingent-fee basis for their fees, but require the client to pay all out-of-pocket costs. In Nancy Ezold's case, the costs alone were over $80,000. And these huge expenses come at a time when the plaintiff is least able to meet them.

So now there is a dual purpose to the section called Current Cases: to continue to provide the revealing detail, and to help the plaintiffs carry the financial load. Please read the following case summaries, and, if you wish, follow the instructions at the end of each summary for information about how to make a tax-deductible contribution.