James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA – A Pennsylvania company fighting a $22 million verdict it says was the product of misconduct by the U.S. Department of Labor is a step closer to getting more ammunition.
Philadelphia federal magistrate judge Craig Straw yesterday recommended that the DOL hand over certain materials related to a former top lawyer who is accused of portraying himself as a hometown lawyer to sway a Philadelphia jury into punishing East Penn Manufacturing for using “Washington lawyers.”
Former Region III solicitor Oscar Hampton said that after he’d already been demoted to a D.C. desk job, East Penn says. Its suit says Hampton had already lost his job when he took the case to trial, then lied to the court about it.
Straw suggests the district judge hearing the case, Jeffrey Schmehl, order the DOL turn over material from informants who complained about the work environment at the Philadelphia office, plus Hampton’s memo to management detailing his trial strategy against East Penn, a maker and recycler of lead-acid batteries that didn’t pay employees for time they spent putting on protective gear and showering.
One attorney described Hampton as “sexist” for calling female workers “hot.” An anonymous letter in 2021 called Hampton’s reign a “catastrophe,” claiming he was overbearing and rude.
An investigation followed, as did surveys of employees who disagreed with Region III’s management. In 2022, Hampton was temporarily moved to a remote position in the front office of the Solicitor of Labor, but the DOL allowed him to continue working on the East Penn trial.
One of the lawyers on Hampton’s team accused him of sexual harassment, and he was offered retirement in lieu of termination. Hampton, a Black man, has filed a discrimination lawsuit.
East Penn says throughout the trial, he represented to the court he was still the Region III solicitor, even though his demotion had already occurred.
It adds the timing of the DOL's response to Hampton's own lawsuit against the agency seems to have been orchestrated to prevent East Penn from including key information as it appeals the judgment against it.
The case against East Penn began in 2018, with federal judge Gene Pratter, who has since passed away, saying the years that followed led to "pre-trial free-wheeling accusations, recriminations, challenges, combative and costly discovery and legal head-butting leading to Proustian piles of paper and a two-month trial."
It was in May 2023 that the jury in her court ordered $22.2 million in back pay but refused to double that amount with liquidated damages, an option in DOL cases in which the company's conduct is egregious enough. It was at the time the highest jury verdict the DOL had ever scored.
Hampton, who had worked for the DOL since 1989, complained he "essentially was demoted to a staff attorney."
That didn't stop him from repeatedly telling jurors he was still the regional solicitor in Philadelphia - "Secretaries come and go but I'm always here and have been the entire time on this case."
Part of his strategy with his "hometown" jurors was to portray attorneys representing East Penn as carpetbaggers, the company says. The complaint notes multiple instances when Hampton went out of his way to call East Penn's counsel "Washington lawyers," like:
-"The grace period was, again, a concoction made out of whole cloth from the Washington lawyers";
-"And they came up with this explanation only after hiring their Washington lawyers"; and
-"East Penn has better resources [than the U.S. government], that they can pay for the best Washington lawyers."
Four months after the verdict, Pratter told a DOL lawyer that he "should tell Mr. Hampton" about something in the case.
That DOL lawyer's response was "Certainly, Your Honor," neglecting to tell Pratter that Hampton was no longer involved in it.
"(T)his concealment was so that neither East Penn nor Judge Pratter would know (about the no-contact order) at the time of the hearing," East Penn says.
