© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Kerry Curry
Editor’s Warning: This article contains offensive language.
HOUSTON (Oct. 9) –Houston trial lawyer John Zavitsanos went after opposing counsel and her “playbook” to win a jury verdict of no wrongdoing for his client, National Oilwell Varco, in a $120 million-dollar employment discrimination lawsuit.
Zavitsanos, a partner at Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anipakos, Alavi & Mensing (AZA), said San Francisco plaintiff’s attorney Angela Alioto of the Law Offices of Mayor Joseph L. Alioto took allegations from her successful case against Houston’s FMC Technologies and superimposed those allegations into the NOV case.
“The number of similarities between that case and the allegations in our case was startling,” he said.
“We kind of went after her and what we called the ‘playbook’ — this effort to basically duplicate what she did in the FMC case in our case,” he said. “We were successful at that because there was literally not a shred … of corroborating evidence with what anything these guys were saying … other then their testimony.”
Alioto said she’s never felt so personally attacked in a trial and said she “objected vociferously” every time opposing counsel brought up the five-year-old case.
“It has no relevance to the present case and shouldn’t have been put into evidence,” she said. Admittance of the FMC case will be among her arguments in a planned appeal, she said.
Alioto said she has been successfully trying employment discrimination cases for 20 years and was shocked at the trial’s outcome. She said she presented corroborating evidence of the discrimination from two NOV managers.
“If saying ‘nigger’ in the workplace, or ‘nigga,’ as opposing counsel says it, several times a day and having photographs of my client (Photoshopped) on a big hairy gorilla passed around with managers laughing… if that kind of language and behavior in the workplace is not a racially hostile atmosphere, I honestly don’t know what is,” she said.
Zavitsanos said he presented evidence that the plaintiffs themselves, were using the term “nigga” with each other as a greeting and said the examination of how the word was being used was one of the more interesting aspects of the defense’s case.
“They said they’d never heard of the term and never used the term,” said Zavitsanos, who said he presented evidence in the trial of how the term is currently being used in pop culture, especially with younger people, and how the word has morphed into a greeting among African-Americans.
“One of their complaints was ‘if management heard them talking like that why didn’t they write them up?’ The evidence was because it did not meet the evidence of racial harassment because they were talking to each other like that and the word wasn’t being used in a racially oppressive or racially hostile way.”
Zavitsanos said defending the case was expensive for his client and cost the company about $1.5 million. He said he plans to seek reimbursement of an estimated $75,000 to $100,000 from the plaintiffs for taxable expenses that cover matters such as depositions and filing fees.
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