Corporate America's scariest opponent

Workforce, April, 2003 by Janet Wiscombe

Plaintiffs' lawyer Cyrus Mehri has forced Texaco, Coca-Cola, and the NFL to alter their diversity practices. His high-stakes racial discrimination class-action suits are changing the face of American business.

Cyrus Mehri, the country's preeminent class-action attorney, is prepared to make your job a living hell. Last fall it was the National Football League that became the object of his prodigious appetite for cleansing corporate America of racial discrimination. As he recalls it, he and cocounsel Johnnie Cochran--the Johnnie Cochran--marched into a meeting with NFL officials, looked them straight in the eye, and declared, "We are here to change the way you do business. The NFL will either change or be changed."

And it was. Cochran and Mehri--whose extracurricular activities once centered on the game of chess--released a report in September titled "Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities" that has riveted the sports world. Acting on the report, which pushes for more minority hiring and stiffer penalties for teams that don't conform, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue implemented a highly controversial policy mandating that teams interview at least one minority candidate before hiring a head coach.

"We're fighting for the soul of the NFL," Mehri said at the time. "There's the good ol' boy way, then there's the fairway."

Without a trace of bravado, he now says flatly, "I'm not scared of anyone." He pauses. "My main social vice is that I love the NFL. That is their misfortune."

In the inner sanctums of many executive boardrooms, the name Cyrus Mehri inspires trepidation and even loathing. At 41, he's proud of topping the charts as one of the most feared lawyers in Washington, D.C., a distinction bestowed upon him for his victories in the largest class-action racial discrimination lawsuits in history. The case against Texaco was settled in 1996 for $176.1 million. The Coca-Cola Company settled in 2000 for a record $192.5 million. Both settlements required the companies to establish independent task forces to monitor their progress on diversity and to make legally binding recommendations on diversity related human resources practices. His energies currently are focused on two epic discrimination lawsuits--both pending--one against Johnson & Johnson, the other against Atlanta-based BellSouth.

Allegations focus on human resources issues such as racial bias in hiring. In the BellSouth case, Mehri accused the phone giant of basing promotions on tests that don't reflect required job skills. ("BellSouth was obsessed with giving tests even though the tests had a disparate impact on minority employees," he says.) The Johnson & Johnson lawsuit is the first class-action racial discrimination case involving both Hispanics and African-Americans. The case also includes a new human resources wrinkle: entry-level bias, which relates to the kinds of jobs minorities are hired for when they begin working at a company. Johnson & Johnson has no comment.

Not surprisingly, Mehri is raking in the clients--and the cash. He's a sought-after speaker who might be found delivering a speech at an NAACP convention, or enjoying a grilled aged petit filet with bearnaise sauce at a National Iranian American Council power brunch, or expounding on theories of liability, coverage issues, and spoilation of evidence in employment cases--the subjects of a keynote address he presented in February at the Employment Practices Liability Insurance conference in New York.

Given his highly publicized class-action activities, it isn't surprising that Mehri has established himself in human resources circles as a dean of diversity, a superstar you had better get to know while he's still on your side of the table, a major voice on equity and fair play in the workplace--and how to keep employers out of courtrooms. Referring to what companies do to get themselves into trouble, and how they can get themselves out, he says that organizations have a tendency to pay more attention to their attorneys than to executives who manage people. "The first lesson is this: The business-side people have to be in control. They give too much control to their attorneys. Often, wounds are self-inflicted. Companies get irrational. Their lawyers get overconfident.

"HR doesn't have enough authority," he continues. "I think that's a big part of the problem. The biggest problems at Coke were with their HR practices. They had almost as many job titles as they did jobs, there was no consistent form of job posting, and promotion practices were not consistently applied. This gave undue discretion to managers and prevented employees from having a fair chance to compete for positions."

Coke had cultivated an image of being extraordinarily progressive and generous in the African-American community, Mehri says. "Unfortunately, Coke--like so many companies--got very arrogant and believed their own PR. They valued minorities as consumers, but not as employees. They were focused on their external image, but not on fair employment practices. J&J is even worse."