Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 11:54:16 EST From: Emily Rizzo Subject: A Real Philadelphia Story (N Y times) The following article appeared in the Metro Section of the Friday New York Times of January 21, 1994. It is reproduced without permission. VINDICATING A LAWYER WITH AIDS, YEARS TOO LATE Bias Battle Over Dismissal Proves Costly Not Only to Worker, but to Law Firm by Mireya Navarro Toward the end, Geoffrey E. Bowers came to define himself by his work as a lawyer. His job with the New York office of the world's largest law firm, a friend said, "gave him a sense of belonging, a sense of worth, the fact he could continue his job even though he had this deadly disease." But in a case similar to the one chronicled in the hit movie "Phila- delphia," Mr. Bowers charged that his star at Baker & McKensie of Chicago rapidly faded after purplish lesions began appearing on his face. Although the firm said it dismissed Mr. Bowers in October 1986 because his performance was lacking, he argued it was because he had AIDS. Mr. Bowers's complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, one of the earliest AIDS employment discrimination cases in the United States, was finally resolved last month with the largest award ever given by the agency --- $500,000 in compensatory damages and the back pay he would have earned had he remained employed. But only his survivors could take comfort in the award. Mr. Bowers died in September 1987 at age 33, not long after testifying in the case, which took seven years to resolve. Cases like Mr. Bowers's are still common today, gay-rights lawyers say, even though employers are more aware of laws banning discrimination based on disability, and the public knows more about AIDS and how it is transmitted. But in the 1908's, when Mr. Bowers was honing a career that he hoped would lead to travel and an assignment abroad, these lawyers say, irrational fear and ostracism were more typical reactions to the new, dreaded disease, which struck mostly homosexual men. Baker & McKensie plans to appeal the order to the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court on the grounds it is "fundamentally contrary to the evidence," said John McGuigan, chairman of the law firm's management committee. The firm's partners maintain they did not know that Mr. Bowers was sick when he was dismissed. But the state's executive deputy human rights commissioner, Lynne Weikart, who ruled that Mr. Bowers's dismissal violated state law, called the firm's argument "implausible." The dismissal, she wrote, too from Mr. Bowers "the one thing which kept his spirits high in spite of impending death." Mr. Bowers did not think of becoming a lawyer until well into his college years. Born to a family of modest means in Somerville, Mass., he studied political science and the classics at Brown University, and after graduating worked as a television news reporter and factory worker. In 1979 Mr. Bowers enrolled in Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City with the help of a scholarship and a night job. Friends described him as bright and hard-working. He earned a position on the Cardozo Law Review after his first year, and he held several part-time jobs to support himself, including working as proofreader at a law firm on the 9p.m.-to-5 a.m. shift. In his second summer at Cardozo, Mr. Bowers worked as a researcher and writer for the New York firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon, which hired him as an associate when he graduated in 1982. Raises and Good Reviews According to testimony during hearings, he received "excellent" evaluations and steady raises at Phillips, Nizer. "Geoff was a first- rate lawyer," Alan Mansfield, a partner who worked with him at the firm and later helped him in his discrimination case, said in an interview. "He was very devoted to clients." But Mr. Bowers had his sights on the international market. He spoke Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish, and had studied abroad during college. His dreams of frequent travel and of moving to Italy were possible with Baker & McKenzie, a firm with more than 1,700 lawyers and 53 offices worldwide. In August 1984, he joined the firm as a litigation associate, at a starting salary of $48,000 a year. At Baker & McKenzie, Mr. Bowers testified, he handled payment disputes over shipments of goods and visa problems for the firm's employees. He was the only lawyer who handled immigration matters in the New York office, although the firm says such work was a small portion of his caseload. First Signs of AIDS Mr. Bowers, whose resume listed his hobbies as cartography, swimming and backpacking, testified that he was in good health until mid-1985. He began to have throbbing headaches and to see yellow spots and one night, after working late, he passed out. A friend took him to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed meningitis. In April 1986 he felt something hard in his palate and went to a dermatologist. The doctor recognized it as Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin cancer common in people with AIDS, and ordered a test for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The test was positive. "He was upset and crying, as anyone would," Jay L. Katz, a Cardozo classmate who went with him to get the test results, said in an interview. "But he dealt with that. He continued work and he continued with his life." But in May, doctors and friends testified, the visible signs of the cancer had spread to his face, similar to the experience of the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia," The first noticeable lesion, a dark knob under pale white skin, appeared on his chin and began growing, Mr. Katz testified. Many others followed on his face and torso. By September, relatives testified, his 11-year-old nephew asked him, "Uncle Geoff, why don't you wash your face?" In the coming weeks doctors at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center used radiation therapy to try to shrink the size of his lesions. He also tried to hide them with cosmetics. "People told me it wasn't working," he testified. "But it did in some instances, did modify the bright purplish -- that awful kind of garish, glaring purplishness so that people, fewer people, would stare at me in places like on the bus or on the trains, at the office, everywhere." Complaints About His Work Baker & McKenzie, however, present numerous witnesses, including clients, adversaries and others not employed by the firm, who said they had not noticed the lesions. the who who did said they thought them to be "bruises or bike scrapes." Richard Schaeffer, the attorney who represented the firm at the hearings, said Mr. Bowers was dismissed because of substandard work. He was replaced in mid-1986 on a multi-million-dollar case involving insurance companies, Mr. Schaeffer said, because his written work was flawed and he "didn't adequately prepare the case for the partners handling it." Mr. Schaeffer said that between the spring and summer of 1986 three clients left because of Mr. Bowers's "poor advice." At some point during that period, he said, Mr. Bowers also took two paralegals to an expensive New York City restaurant and charged the lunch to a client, showing "extremely poor judgment." He had no authority to do that, and the firm reversed the charges. Charles Conroy, who supervises the New York City office for the firm's executive committee, said the firm's policy regarding employees with H.I.V. is to deal with them in a "humane fashion" and allow them to work until they are unable to do so. The firm maintains it did not learn of Mr. Bowers's illness until he filed his complaint in November 1986. Questions About Dismissal But Ms. Weikart noted in her order that the firm's partners voted to dismiss Mr. Bowers in July 1986 -- only two months after decided to retain him during his annual evaluation. She said the partners did so without consulting his supervisor about his qualifications or asking Mr. Bowers to provide a memo listing his clients and billable hours to prove job performance -- standard practice when an associate was considered for termination. She said the testimony showed that Mr. Bowers was productive and that his supervisors argued that letting him go would cause hardship to an overburdened litigation department. Objections to Mr. Bowers's supervisors succeeded in delaying the decision, but the following October, 12 of 15 partners reaffirmed the dismissal. His last day of work was Dec. 5, 1986. Mr. Bowers testified that he was hurt, angry and incredulous. "In light of the fact that I was dealing with my AIDS and my Kaposi's sarcoma, I merely felt as though they had taken the last thing in the world that meant anything to me," he testified. Friends said that Mr. Bowers, known as fun-loving and sociable, became reclusive. He missed friends' birthday parties and often, when talking on the telephone, would choke up and hang up. He developed insomnia and began taking tranquilizers. With no savings and the loss of a job that paid $81,000 a year, he relied financially on friends, family and his companion, a freelance writer, with whom he shared an East Village apartment. Verdict After Death Having lost his job, he lived to seek redress, friends said. He sought two friends and fellow Cardozo graduates, Robert Balsam and Daniel Felber, to represent him. "It was an attack on his credibility and his standing as an attorney, and he wanted to restore that," said Mr. Mansfield his former colleague. Hearings on the case were held over 39 days between July 1987 and June 1989. Mr. Bowers died in September 1987, two months after he completed testimony. (His companion died a year later, also from AIDS.) The New York State Human Rights Commissioner, Margarita Rosa, said Mr. Bowers's case was unusually complex and well litigated but not exceptionally long for an agency with 10 administrative law judges to handle from 800 to 1,200 cases each year. In his will, Mr. Bowers named his mother as beneficiary. Family members declined to be interviewed. His friends said it was said and disappointing that Mr. Bowers did not live to see the outcome, but they appreciate the victory. "The attitude we have here is that Geoff didn't spend his last days on earth fighting in vain," Mr. Felber said. "He was vindicated."