PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A jury has awarded an Oregon woman $1 million in damages after finding she was discriminated against by a gas station employee who told her, “I don’t serve Black people.”
The Multnomah County jury’s award this week to Portland resident Rose Wakefield, 63, included punitive damages of $550,000.
Wakefield’s lawyer, Gregory Kafoury, said she stopped for gas at Jacksons Food Store in Beaverton on March 12, 2020, and saw the attendant, Nigel Powers, ignore her and instead pump gas for other drivers.
When she tried to ask for assistance he said, “I’ll get to you when I feel like it,” according to Kafoury.
Attendants are required to pump fuel for motorists at gas stations in Oregon’s larger population centers including Portland and the nearby suburb of Beaverton.
Surveillance video showed Wakefield go inside to ask for help. Another employee followed her back outside to pump her gas. Kafoury said as she was leaving, Wakefield asked Powers why he refused to help her and that he said, “I don’t serve Black people.”
“I was like, ‘What world am I living in?’” Wakefield told KGW. “This is not supposed to go down like that. It was a terrible, terrible confrontation between me and this guy.”
During the following week, Wakefield complained twice to managers, but her phone calls were largely disregarded, Kafoury said.
Powers was fired a month later after corporate records showed he had been written up several times for talking on his cellphone, Kafoury said.
“Ms. Wakefield originally was just going to let this go,” Kafoury said. “She told her friends that it was too disturbing and she didn’t want to deal with it. And then she thought about it and said, ‘It’s too wrong. I have to do something about it.’”
The Associated Press has reached out to Jacksons Food Stores for comment. Efforts to contact Powers were unsuccessful.
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