“After the investigation has been conducted we will have the appropriate response to the complaint that is being filed seeking $11 million in damages”, he said. The company says it is opening its own investigation into the incident and will respond appropriately to the lawsuit once that is complete, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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At St. Helena, halfway through the three-hour trip, they said, they were escorted out, past passengers in other cars, and were met by police from the Napa Valley Railroad and the city of St. Helena.
Lawsuit: Attorney Waukeen Q. McCoy, center left, speaks with plaintiffs filing a racial discrimination lawsuit over their ejection from a Napa Valley Wine Train in August. “This is 2015, and this just can not happen again”.
Bay Area NAACP leaders said Thursday they support the women and their lawsuit.
The tourist attraction’s CEO has apologized for the incident and promised to provide diversity training to employees.
“Following verbal and physical abuse toward other guests and staff, it was necessary to get our police involved”, the statement read.
McCoy, their attorney, promptly dismissed that offer and said similar cases of discrimination had settled in the past for as much as $5 million.
“The lawsuit highlights that blacks are still being treated differently in America”, he said.
The train company refunded their $124 fares and provided a van to pick them up and take them back to Napa.
McCoy initially said his clients would sue only if negotiations with Wine Train for a settlement failed. The new owners are Nobel House Hotels & Resorts, in Seattle, Washington and Brooks Street, a real estate development and investment company with an office in Walnut Creek, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Ownership of the train changed hands on September 15, three weeks after the incident. The new partners acquired the line from the family of its late founder Vince DeDomenico, a Napan who co-invented Rice-A-Roni.
“That was the most humiliating experience I ever had in my entire life”, club member Lisa Renee Johnson said. The hashtag #laughingwhileblack, which Johnson used on her Facebook page, took off on social media, with many vowing to boycott the wine train.
“We thought the objective of the Wine Train was to have a good time and enjoy being with a large group”, she told the Register the day after their removal. “If you get a group of 11 women talking and laughing, it’s going to be loud”.
“I truly believe from the moment we got on the train we were singled out”, she said.
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An earlier effort by the Wine Train to offer the women a private vehicle and a complimentary party for 39 guests was refused. At least one passenger scolded the women, saying, “This is not a bar”, according to the lawsuit.
