The Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court will decide whether to uphold a $1.1 million jury award given to a Teaneck police officer who said she was sexually harassed by her colleagues.
A hearing date has not been scheduled, and Teaneck officials said Wednesday that it would likely not be heard until early next year. The court filed notice on Sept. 17 that it would hear arguments in the case, and township officials were notified of the decision on Monday.
The Bergen County town has lost verdicts before a Superior Court jury and an appeals court during its seven-year court battle with Diane Mancini and has spent at least $988,000 on legal fees to defend itself. Mancini, the town’s first policewoman, said she was sexually harassed from 1981, when she joined the force, through June 1996, when she filed her suit.
The central issue in the case is whether the jury should have considered any evidence before June 1990. Teaneck’s lawyers claim the statute of limitations had expired and that Mancini can only claim harassment from events within six years of her filing the suit.
Mancini said she found things such as panties and motel keys in her mailbox, and heard suggestive comments and other offensive remarks from fellow officers. When she complained to her superiors, she said they mostly ignored her or contributed their own harassing comments.
In 2000, a Bergen County jury awarded Mancini $1 million in compensatory damages for emotional distress and $500,000 in punitive damages. However, the trial judge reduced the compensatory award to $625,000 and threw out the punitive damages, noting that Teaneck had more female police officers than any other department in the county.
Teaneck then appealed the $625,000 award, but the appellate court rejected the request and also reinstated the punitive damages award in a ruling issued last April, saying Mancini’s treatment was “inexcusable.”
Mancini was not immediately available for comment, but her lawyer, Harold J. Ruvoldt Jr., told The Record of Bergen County that if the justices side with the township, it would “seriously undercut decisions in other cases involving employment.”