A Reformer Who Means Business

It's almost midnight, which means it's the perfect time to call Cyrus Mehri. Don't worry, it's not too late. He's a notorious night owl. Ever since his days working with Ralph Nader, corporate America's original gate-crasher, late-night plotting has been part of Mehri's playbook. The only way he knows how to survive a battle in which he's outnumbered and outspent -- which is almost always the case -- is to outwork and outmaneuver the other side. So why not call late? It's Mehri time.

Tonight he doesn't sound at all like someone who has just shuttled back and forth between Washington, DC and New York by train for an afternoon hearing only to arrive home at around 10 PM. He doesn't sound like someone who has spent much of the day on his cell phone. Mehri, whose name is pronounced "merry" (and whose demeanor matches the description), sounds as if he's on his first call of the day. He has a lot on his plate: a lawsuit against BellSouth. Another against Johnson & Johnson. And then there's the ongoing imbroglio with the National Football League. He and Johnnie Cochran -- yes, that Johnnie Cochran -- have threatened to sue the league over the paucity of African-American head coaches. "There's a lot happening," he says.

Indeed, Mehri is a long way from winding down. American business is facing a loud, messy new era of accountability and reform. New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer is upsetting the applecart on Wall Street. Congress has been holding hearings, debating legislation, and expressing popular outrage over accounting fraud, corporate governance, and CEO pay. And then there's Mehri. He is something of a one-man army in the battle against business as usual. Unlike government regulators, he lacks subpoena power and taxpayer funds, but his impact -- both in terms of penalties and remedies -- is undeniable.

And his focus is laser sharp: the issue of race in the American workplace. As a key member of the legal team that filed a racial-discrimination class-action suit against Texaco, he helped wrangle a then-record $176.1 million settlement in 1996. In 2000, he won a $192.5 million settlement in a suit against Coca-Cola. In the high-stakes, high-risk field of discrimination litigation, "he's one of the superstars," says Byron Perkins, an attorney with Gordon, Silberman, Wiggins & Childs in Birmingham, Alabama and Mehri's co - lead counsel on the Coke and BellSouth cases.

To some observers, including his old mentor, Nader, Mehri is a legal pioneer. "Until he came along, these settlements were relatively small," says Nader. "He has broadened their significance beyond the amount of compensation by expanding them into an arm of the civil-rights movement." In addition to seeking damages and back pay for victims of discrimination, Mehri is determined to reshape the companies that he sues. His settlements often include substantial changes that go beyond the "programmatic relief" that a judge would impose in a trial.

Following months of contentious negotiations, Texaco and Coke both agreed to the formation of diversity task forces from outside the company. Each seven-member body has authority to investigate, rework, and monitor the company's HR practices for several years in order to ensure that minority employees are treated fairly. Senior management's compensation is based partly on how the company performs on diversity issues. To Mehri, those sorts of suits aren't simply about what a company has done in the past but also about how it treats employees in the future. "If you're going to create corporate or cultural change, you need to put the right tools in place," he says.

Last September, the Equality and Fairness Task Force at ChevronTexaco, formerly Texaco, issued its fifth and final report. It described all of the ways that the merged company has changed as a result of the 1996 settlement. But the report also included reminders that diversity, like all of business, isn't static. ChevronTexaco, the task force noted, was still struggling to replace a number of minority managers who took a "separation package" that the company offered at the time of the merger. "Did every problem get solved?" asks Mehri. "No. But the Texaco culture changed. Some executives there felt that the task force was the best thing that could have happened."

Andrea Giampetro-Meyer, a professor of law and social responsibility at the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Maryland, has been following Mehri's work since the Texaco settlement. She suspects that if the subject matter weren't so thorny, one of his cases would have been chronicled in a Hollywood movie by now, along the lines of A Civil Action or Erin Brockovich. But discrimination in the workplace is explosive, complicated, and subtle. Companies that deny wrongdoing may not realize that they have been systematically discriminating, because they haven't monitored the treatment of minorities once those people were hired. Likewise, some employees don't realize that they are being discriminated against until they see a statistical breakdown and recognize a pattern of favoritism. Mehri often focuses on glass ceilings that limit minority advancement and glass walls that keep people confined to certain areas, such as human resources and public relations, that are removed from the profit-making departments.