News Article

Judge In Coke Bias Suit Concerned About Secrecy, Issues A Warning

The Atlanta Constitution

Published: September 03, 1999

ATLANTA -- The federal judge in the Coca-Cola racial discrimination lawsuit declined to dramatically change his order protecting the company's documents, but he expressed concern at the volume of files being stamped "confidential. "

Plaintiffs' lawyers had complained that Coca-Cola was abusing U.S. District Judge Richard Story's order governing what documents can be made public. The attorneys said Coca-Cola so far has indiscriminately marked as confidential virtually all of the 32,000 pages of documents the company has turned over to the plaintiffs.

In the lawsuit, four current and former employees accuse the company of discriminating against African-American workers in pay, promotions and performance evaluations.

Coca-Cola strongly denies the allegations in the suit, which seeks class-action status.

During a pretrial fact-finding process called discovery, both sides are required to turn over documents to each other. Under Story's protective order, documents marked confidential by either party cannot be made public.

As part of the order, Story said either party could designate as confidential such documents that contain "commercial information" or " individual personal information. "

Cyrus Mehri, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said of Story's order, "We are pleased the court gave the parties guidance on this issue. "