Ex-employee wins $218,425 discrimination judgment against J&K Salvage for racial slurs
In March 2020, Ronald Ford got a job as a truck driver with J&K Salvage, west of York on Kings Mill Road.
According to court documents, it did not go well.
“Throughout Mr. Ford’s tenure,” his attorneys wrote in a complaint filed against the salvage company in federal court in Harrisburg, “he regularly witnessed and was personally subjected to racial discrimination at the hands of the owner, Joe Darrah.”
Ford, who is Black, alleges he was called the n-word and was subjected to references to his race during his employment, which, he asserted, created a hostile work environment.
Ford filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He was advised of his rights to file a suit in federal court, which is what he did.
He filed a complaint in U.S. Middle District Court on Feb. 28, 2022, asserting that J&K’s owner Joe Darrah had discriminated against him and had used racially derogatory language while dealing with him.
According to the complaint against the company, Ford asserted that a fellow employee, a diesel mechanic, introduced Ford to a new employee with a racial slur.
He also alleged that when Darrah’s dog chased him, Darrah told him not to worry because “the dog likes dark meat,” according to the complaint.
Ford also alleged that Darrah “instructed him not to enter a dark area until the lights were turned on so that Mr. Ford could be seen,” according to the complaint.
The complaint also described an incident in September 2019 when Ford was driving one of Darrah’s trucks in Berks County. The complaint alleges that a police officer pulled Ford over for having a tag on the truck that expired in 2008. He was given a warning and allowed to continue on his way. Some time later, another police officer pulled him over for having a missing mudflap and bracket, according to the complaint. The officer also informed him that the registration on the trailer had been long expired and issued another warning, instructing him to let his boss know that the registration was expired.
When Ford told Darrah about the lapsed registration, according to the complaint, Darrah said responded with racial slurs.
According to the complaint, Ford said he had heard Darrah similarly abuse other African-American employees.
The company, according to court documents, did not respond to the complaint. The federal district judge, Jennifer Wilson, wrote in a ruling that it “did not appear, file an answer or otherwise defend or respond to the complaint.”
On Feb. 28, 2022, the judge entered an order that awarded Ford his claim - $5,760 in lost wages, $40,000 in emotional damage, $12,180 in attorney fees and $485.77 in costs and $160,000 in punitive damages. The total ran to $218,425.77, according to the judge’s order.
Owner: Unaware of the suit
Darrah said in a phone interview Wednesday that “one of his guys” had accepted service of the lawsuit and that he had not known anything about it. His description of the lawsuit was “one of my employees called him a (n-word) so he sued me.”
Darrah said he had no chance to defend against the suit because he didn’t know about it. He said his lawyers are handling it now.
“I didn’t know about it,” he said,
On July 3, according to a motion filed in York County Court, sheriff’s deputies attempted to enter Darrah’s property to enter a levy to collect the award determined by the federal court. The motion claims Darrah refused entry to the deputies and Ford’s attorneys have asked the court to order Darrah to comply with the order.
That’s where it stands.
Ford’s attorney, Larry Weisberg, declined to comment about the litigation, allowing the court record to speak for itself. He also said he would advise his client not to speak to reporters.
Previously: J&K Salvage held in contempt over long-standing dispute with state over shingle storage
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Man gets $218K racial discrimination judgment against J&K Salvage
