Audio By Carbonatix
A former female employee who sued Sky Chefs Inc. in 1994 claiming that company supervisors failed to prevent male co-workers from sexually harassing and assaulting her on the job settled her case earlier this month.
Tonjua Benge worked as a truck driver for the Arlington-based airline food company. Her allegations and lawsuit were detailed in a January 1996 Dallas Observer story (“Lovers no more”).
As part of the settlement, both sides agreed not to disclose details of the deal. But Benge says she is not happy with the final agreement. She accepted it at the 11th hour, she says, only because her lawyer insisted that she do so. The settlement agreement was reached on August 8, only four days before the case was scheduled for trial in U.S. District Court in Dallas.
“By the time I pay my bills, I’ve really got nothing left,” Benge says. “I feel I was forced into it.”
We’re thankful for you. Are you thankful for us?
We feel thankful for our staff and for the privilege of fulfilling our mission to be an unparalleled source of information and insight in Dallas. We’re aiming to raise $30,000 by December 31, so we can continue covering what matters most to this community.
Help us continue giving back to Dallas.
Benge’s lawyer, D’Metria Benson, a solo practitioner, contends that the settlement was a fair one. But she concedes that Benge expressed some misgivings about the deal with Sky Chefs.
“[Benge] wanted her day in court,” Benson says. “Sometimes it’s difficult to have something that has been going on so long just stop.”
Sky Chefs outside counsel, Walter Siebert, a partner at the Denver-based firm of Sherman & Howard, could not be reached for comment.
The company has a history of aggressively responding to claims of sexual harassment. When a female worker in Oregon complained of sexual harassment and discrimination and won a $625,000 jury award, the company unsuccessfully appealed the ruling all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since 1992, Sky Chefs has been the target of eight sexual harassment and discrimination claims in Dallas federal court. Prior to Benge’s settlement, Sky Chefs had made a deal in three of those cases.
But the conclusion of the Benge litigation must be a welcome relief for the company, which dominates the airborne-meal market at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and many other airports nationwide.
“Oh God,” Siebert told the Observer last winter when discussing the Benge litigation. “This is the case from hell. It’s like a soap opera.”
Benge had asserted in a claim filed in federal court in May 1994 that “her male co-workers habitually tried to force or coerce Ms. Benge into gratifying their sexual desires on demand.” She alleged that when she complained to Sky Chefs management, nothing was done.
Specifically, Benge alleged that she was assaulted on the job by her co-worker and former lover–Carlos Minor Jr. Benge said she had ended her private relationship with Minor because he had turned abusive. At the time of the previous Observer story, Minor and the other co-workers involved in the allegations denied Benge’s claims.
Minor had claimed in court that when his “purely sexual” 18-month affair with Benge ended, she launched an obsessive, three-year campaign of stalking and harassment. He said Benge barraged his home and workplace with hang-up calls, affixed cruel messages about his wife to his car, peered into his bedroom window at odd hours, and kept late-night vigils in the parking lot of his apartment complex, once leaving a pair of panties on his door knob.
Benge denied ever menacing Minor, insisting she was the victim. With the settlement, all the claims that the two sides have filed against each other will be dropped.
Even though she is unhappy with the terms of the settlement, Benge says the rest of her life has pulled together. She recently married a man who, she says, “could stand by me through all this,” and she gave birth 10 weeks ago to her third son.
