Former Queen’s nurse awarded nearly $4M

• Racial harassment alleged in workplace lawsuits at Hawaiian Airlines, Queen’s

A jury on Wednesday unanimously awarded a former Queen’s Medical Center nurse nearly $4 million in damages in a whistleblower case in which the African-American woman found an image of a noose taped to her workplace locker and an unsigned racist note left in her hospital mailbox.

The 12-person jury awarded Ellen Harris $630,000 in general damages and $3.2 million in punitive damages after finding that she was harassed and discriminated against for reporting suspected wrongdoing in 2011, that her race was a substantial motivating factor in the harassment and that the conditions created a hostile work environment.

The plaintiff needed only 10 jurors to find in her favor, but all 12 joined in the verdict. The trial lasted five weeks.

“All 12 jurors just said, ‘This is not Hawaii,’” said Carl Varady, Harris’ attorney. “’We’re the Aloha State. We’re not going down the pathway of hate.’”

Queen’s issued a brief statement late Wednesday.

“We are very disappointed in (Wednesday’s) verdict and will be filing an appeal,” said spokesman Cedric Yamanaka in a written statement. “Because this is pending litigation, we will not comment further.”

The Harris case was one of two discrimination cases in Hawaii filed by African-American workers that went before state judges and that included the use of a noose.

The noose is a powerful symbol of hate to many black Americans, bringing to mind an ugly history of slavery and lynchings at the hands of whites.

In the second case, Hawaiian Airlines worker Timothy Degrate, who supervised a grounds crew that directed planes at airport gates on Hawaii island, complained to management for months about a hostile work environment, including racial harassment, according to his lawsuit.

Despite the complaints, he found a noose fashioned from rope hanging on the locker next to his in August 2016.

The person using the adjacent locker, which unlike Degrate’s had a hook to hang the rope, said he believed the noose was intended to send a message to Degrate, according to the lawsuit.

A clinical psychologist who worked on Degrate’s workers’ compensation claim concluded “in all medical probability” that an African-American finding a noose adjacent to his locker would be traumatized.

“There could be no question that the symbol of a noose for an African-American reminds them of their long history of racial harassment, victimization and, in some instances, murder,” the lawsuit quotes the unidentified psychologist as writing. “The event is akin to a person of Jewish heritage viewing a swastika affixed to their locker.”

Hawaiian Airlines said in a statement in January that an independent investigation of Degrate’s allegations was unable to verify actions by specific individuals. It also said Hawaiian was committed to maintaining a fair and safe work environment.

The lawsuit is pending.

In the Queen’s case, jurors were told that Harris, the only black nurse at the time in the medical intensive care unit, reported concerns to management about another nurse jeopardizing patient safety, including Harris’ suspicion that the other nurse was stealing narcotics intended for patients, according to Varady. Two other nurses eventually reported the same drug-use suspicions to management, the jurors were told.

After Harris reported her initial patient-safety concerns to management, the harassment against her intensified, and she found the racist note in her mailbox the next day and the noose image on her locker seven weeks later on Christmas Eve, according to Varady.

In the meantime, Queen’s gave the nurse who Harris reported to management the option to resign or be fired, he added.

“They gave that nurse more protections than Ellen or her patients,” Varady said.