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| Jury awards $1.1 million to former prison official |
| By Pennsylvania Inquirer |
| Published: 05/01/2001 |
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A former New Jersey state prison superintendent who claimed he was fired for dating a black woman has won a $1.1 million judgment against the N.J. Department of Corrections. After 16 years of litigation, a Mercer County jury ruled that Edward O'Lone, 58, a white man, lost his job as superintendent of Leesburg State Prison in 1985 because he was dating Terry Tarlton, a black secretary at the jail. The facility, located in Cumberland County, is now Bayside State Prison. O'Lone and Tarlton, who got married in 1986, were awarded $773,000 and will receive about $300,000 in interest. O'Lone has asked that the state be ordered to pay his legal bills. 'I was fired by mean-spirited people who claimed at the time to be my friends, for no other reason than I happened to fall in love with a black woman,' said O'Lone, who moved to Glassboro with his wife and began working for Ancora State Psychiatric Hospital in Winslow. He retired in 1998. The couple have three children, age 15, 12 and 11. At the trial, O'Lone testified that he was threatened regarding his relationship with Tarlton at a Department of Corrections staff luncheon in October 1984. William H. Fauver, then commissioner of the Department of Corrections, placed O'Lone on paid administrative leave in December 1984 and fired him several months later. O'Lone's attorney, Mario Iavicoli of Haddonfield, who originally filed the discrimination lawsuit on behalf of the O'Lones in 1985, said he had trouble getting the case heard before a jury. A state Superior Court dismissed the case, but an appellate court reversed the ruling and ordered a trial. The Department of Corrections, which maintained during the trial that O'Lone was fired for disorderly conduct during a meeting, declined comment. |
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