The lawsuit claims that the group-a book club comprised of mostly black women, the oldest of whom is 85-was unfairly targeted by the train’s staff and other, mostly white passengers.
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A group of predominantly African-American women who are part of a women’s book club that was kicked off a Napa Valley Wine Train in California for allegedly being “too loud” has filed an $11 million lawsuit against the company, according to a court complaint.
According to Johnson, the train’s maître d’hotel twice warned her group – which had planned to use the ride to discuss Brenda Jackson’s “A Man’s Promise”, its book of the month – for speaking and laughing too loudly before they were told to leave midway through their trip.
One of the women described the experience as “humiliating”, per ABC News.
The group says their reputation has been irreparably damaged, and that the lawsuit is being filed to hold management accountable so that what happened to them won’t happen to anyone else. “It felt like we were being singled out because there were others doing exact same thing we were doing”, said Lisa Johnson, a plaintiff in the case.
“We want people to realize that this is our life and there have been very serious repercussions”, Johnson said.
The women are being represented by leading civil rights attorney Waukeen McCoy, who said at a press conference Thursday, “This lawsuit shows that blacks are not just being treated different in big cities, but also in small towns like Napa”.
Wine train officials have hired a former FBI agent to conduct their own investigation into the incident, a company spokesman said in response to the lawsuit.
Said Johnson, “Racism is something we are going through as a country”. He claimed the incident was not racially motivated. But the women say they were personally and professionally shamed. “Not only were they kicked off the wine train for being black, they were defamed on social media”.
“Two of the members have been terminated from their jobs because of the lies the company said in that Facebook post”, McCoy said.
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The wine train’s chief executive officer has apologized for the ejection and the Facebook message, saying it was inaccurate and “made a bad situation worse”. Debbie Reynolds said she couldn’t go into details about the train. “They don’t feel they did anything wrong”.
