Morris Dees: Southern Poverty Law Center Jury Verdict

          On February 18, 2015 a New Orleans federal jury in an SPLC case awarded $14 million in compensatory and punitive damages to five Indian guest workers who were defrauded and exploited in a labor trafficking scheme engineered by Signal International, a Gulf Coast marine services company, an immigration lawyer and an Indian labor recruiter who lured hundreds of workers to a Mississippi shipyard with false promises of permanent U.S. residency.

          After a four-week trial before U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, the jury ruled that Signal International, New Orleans lawyer Malvern C. Burnett and India-based recruiter Sachin Dewan engaged in labor trafficking, fraud, racketeering and discrimination. The jury also found that one of the five plaintiffs was a victim of false imprisonment and retaliation.

          The other lawsuits facing Signal International and its agents, representing more than 200 additional workers, were filed after a judge did not grant class action status in this case, which would have allowed the suit to benefit most of Signal’s guest workers. The SPLC coordinated an unprecedented legal collaboration that brought together nearly a dozen of the nation’s top law firms and civil rights organizations to represent, on a pro bono basis, hundreds of workers excluded from the original SPLC suit by the denial of class action status. The next case involving 20 Indian workers will be tried in Beaumont, Texas, where Signal operates a marine service facility on April 5th, 2015.