Jury to former NBA star: No discrimination

A federal jury decided in less than 15 minutes of deliberation Friday that a Buckhead tavern did not violate the civil rights of a former professional basketball player and an Atlanta attorney by asking them to give up their seats to two white women and ejecting them when they refused.
Joe Barry Carroll, once an NBA All-Star, and lawyer Joseph Shaw were drinking in the Tavern at Phipps five years ago when they encountered the unwritten policy that men be asked to give up seats to women in exchange for a free round of drinks.

The men, both African-American, refused and were told to leave the restaurant. On those facts all sides agreed, but on not much more.

Carroll and Shaw contended the tavern used the policy to harass black patrons and keep the bar and its patio predominantly white. Greg Greenbaum, CEO of the Tavern Corp., contended the policy was strictly to curry favor with female patrons, who would attract more men and keep the bar tabs high.

The policy, he said, was created by a black bar manager who saw the opportunity in female shoppers burdened with bags.

The two men asked the jury, which was evenly split by gender and comprised seven whites and three blacks, for more than $3 million in damages.

"I'm disappointed in the outcome, but I had to go through the process," Carroll said after the verdict in U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash's Atlanta courtroom Friday. "Their behavior was outrageous."

Ernest Greer, a lawyer for the tavern, told the jury it was Carroll and Shaw who injected race into the policy, which he said had been applied evenly at the restaurant, open for at least two decades.

“This incident didn't happen because they were black," Greer said. "This incident happened because Mr. Carroll and Mr. Shaw wanted to be treated better than anyone else."

He quoted Kathleen Cleaver, an Emory University law professor, who testified that a humiliated Carroll told her shortly after the incident that he wasn't giving up his seat for two "scantily clad white women."

But, Greer said, "when he was asked on the witness stand, would he if they were black? He said, ‘I might have.”'

Jeffrey Bramlett, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs,  dismissed the restaurant's contention that the policy was just "good manners" or "Southern hospitality." He quoted two former employees who said Greenbaum feared that if the tavern attracted too many young blacks or a hip-hop crowd, it would ruin the business because it would turn off white people.

“Southern Hospitality did not apply equally to blacks and whites," he said. “The Tavern doesn’t cater to blacks.”

The controversy started on Aug. 11, 2006, when Carroll, who was taken first overall in the 1980 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors and is now an investment adviser, met Shaw at the Tavern's bar and ordered drinks and appetizers.

Two white women walked up to the bar and the bartender asked Carroll and Shaw to relinquish their seats to the female patrons. Carroll and Shaw declined, saying they were not ready to leave.

The bar management then offered to get the men a table but they refused.

The Tavern's operating partner, Heather Dennis, called an off-duty Atlanta police officer who provided security and had Carroll and Shaw escorted out. Carroll and Shaw contend they were removed from the bar because they were black, constituting a civil rights violation of public accommodations laws.

Greer acknowledged Dennis could have been more diplomatic during the confrontation, but he reminded jurors that only two former employees contended the restaurant's strategy was to keep the crowds white. He noted other former employees disputed that assertion and that no other patrons testified they had suffered discrimination.

“Everybody has testified to you that it was a racially mixed environment,” Greer told jurors. “This is a race case. They have to prove to you they were asked to get up from their seat and made to leave the bar because of their race.”