A federal jury in New York decided on Friday that a woman who was one of 11 people in her division at Bank of New York Mellon laid off in 2010 was not a victim of sex discrimination. The case was unusual in that it even went to trial.
The plaintiff, Rochelle Cohen, a 56-year-old portfolio officer in the wealth management division of Bank of New York Mellon, lost her $124,000-a-year job on Sept. 20, 2010, in one of the rounds of postfinancial crisis layoffs at the bank. Nine of the other employees in her division who lost their jobs were women. And Ms. Cohen testified at the trial that two years before she was fired, she asked her managers why she was not getting paid as much as the men. She contended that her managers became critical of her after she brought up gender issues.
The Federal District Court jury deliberated for just one day before delivering its verdict. Kevin Heine, a spokesman for the bank, said afterward, “We are pleased with the jury’s unanimous verdict, which clearly confirms that Ms. Cohen’s pay and performance were judged solely on the merits, not on her gender.”
Ms. Cohen said she was disappointed, “but I’m glad I fought the fight and hope it will make a difference for other women.” Her lawyer, Milton L. Williams Jr., of the New York firm Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, declined to comment.
Most discrimination complaints by Wall Street women are relegated to private, industry-run arbitration or settled before a jury gets a chance to review the evidence. The number of cases that make it to trial is further reduced because “a huge percentage that don’t settle get dismissed in summary judgment,” said Michael E. GrenertÖ, an employment lawyer at the New York firm Liddle & Robinson.
Women in finance have not fared well in the years since the 2008 financial crisis, as their share of jobs among the nine largest firms dropped to 36 percent from 40 percent from 2007 to 2011, according to a report by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Ms. Cohen sued Bank of New York Mellon in January 2011 for gender discrimination and violations of the Equal Pay Act, seeking back pay, earnings lost after she was fired and punitive damages.
On Thursday, the jury heard closing arguments in the case after a seven-day trial. The testimony often diverted from issues of pay and promotion to focus on complaints about a bank salesman who had been reprimanded after reports that he had engaged in “inappropriate and unprofessional behavior” with female colleagues.
According to testimony at the trial, the bank’s tristate region, covering New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, eliminated 10 women and one man from the wealth management division from July through October 2010. Doris P. Meister, president of United States Markets-Tristate at Bank of New York Mellon, told jurors on Thursday, “I can assure you gender discrimination did not play a role in this list.”
Ms. Cohen, who had 21 years of experience in the financial services industry when she joined a predecessor company to Bank of New York in 2000, had been earning $120,000 to $150,000 in salary and bonus in the years before she moved to what was then the Mellon Financial Corporation. She accepted a base pay of $47,500 before bonus at Mellon, having been assured that she would be making more money “in no time,” according to her complaint.
Ms. Cohen said in her complaint that the bank told her she was filling the only position available. But her lawyer told jurors that, after hiring her, the bank hired two men with comparable experience and paid them $100,000 a year more than she was making. The bank disputed that Ms. Cohen’s experience was comparable to that of the two men, noting that they had educational and professional credentials that she did not have.
The loss of her job took a toll, she told jurors. “Being fired was probably the most humiliating thing that ever happened to me,” Ms. Cohen said. “It was very abrupt. It was very upsetting.” As a result of being fired, she said, her clients and contacts began to “assume that I did something wrong.”
The bank’s lawyer and witnesses dismissed Ms. Cohen’s two decades of experience at brokerage firms as being downmarket to the fiduciary role Bank of New York Mellon provides to clients. Asked if the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley had a wealth management division, for example, Ms. Meister responded, “They call it wealth management.”
In her 2007 performance evaluation, Ms. Cohen received an overall rating of “strong” out of four options that included below target, on target, strong and outstanding. Her manager remarked in that review that she had “a remarkable year.”
Ms. Cohen testified that in 2008, she began to ask managers why she was not making more money, and that she wanted to make as much as her male peers. One of her former managers admitted in court that Ms. Cohen had brought up the possibility of unequal pay based on gender, but another bank official said she remembered only that Ms. Cohen inquired about making more money.
She had generated revenue of $1,695,000 for the bank in 2009, and her lawyer mentioned several times over the course of the trial that one of the male portfolio officers who earned more money had generated only $1,555,000 that year. Witnesses for the bank have testified that there were aspects of Ms. Cohen’s revenue base that caused her accounts to be less profitable than some of her colleagues’.
Ms. Cohen currently works as a broker at the Signature Group of Companies, an insurance and financial planning company based in Garden City, N.Y. She earned $70,000 at Signature last year.
While Ms. Cohen argued that her career got off track after she began to question whether she was being paid less than the men, Lloyd Clareman, a lawyer for the bank, told jurors in his opening statement that Ms. Cohen had been on a strong career track until she made a “serious mistake.”
According to witnesses for the bank, Ms. Cohen learned in 2005 that a woman she had once worked with, who subsequently was disfigured in an act of domestic violence, had just been hired. Bank officials testified that Ms. Cohen suggested that it had been a mistake to hire the woman because clients would see her. By Ms. Cohen’s account, she had brought up the issue because she was concerned that the woman get the support she needed, and that her presence at the bank might pose security challenges given the history of violence by her former boyfriend.
The bank issued a written warning to Ms. Cohen in 2005, telling her she must stop discussing the new employee. The incident was mentioned in her 2006 review, but by 2007, her manager was noting her “remarkable” year.
There was extensive discussion at the trial of behavior by a salesman at the bank, Peter Culver. Like Ms. Cohen, Mr. Culver had received a written warning from the bank. In his case, there had been complaints related to his behavior toward women.
Although the warning to Mr. Culver did not specifically mention it, one woman who was interviewed as part of the bank’s internal investigation of Mr. Culver said he was “one of the more known men to ogle women.” Another said that Mr. Culver would sometimes rub her back and, at the end of the day, blow kisses to her.
In a brief telephone conversation, Mr. Culver declined to comment.
Thomas Hurlbrink, managing director in wealth management sales, told a company investigator that Mr. Culver “loses eye contact with a person he is speaking with to stare at a woman,” according to the investigator’s notes., and that he had told Mr. Culver that such behavior was “creepy.”
Mr. Hurlbrink told the investigator that he had hired a coach for Mr. Culver in 2011 and that the coaching initially was effective. But “the minute the coaching stopped, the behavior was back,” he said.
Given the company’s willingness to hire a coach for one employee who was described as “a little touchy feely with females” in a company investigation, Mr. Williams, Ms. Cohen’s lawyer, asked Patrick Crowe, managing director for the tristate region in wealth management, whether the bank had ever considered getting Ms. Cohen a coach.
There had not been any discussions about that, Mr. Crowe said.