Chrysler execs tell of slurs
Depositions filed in auto dealer's lawsuit alleging discrimination
By Rudolph Bush
Tribune staff reporter

January 28, 2004

Top officials at DaimlerChrysler's Midwest financial arm often used slurs that maligned African-American employees and customers, according to depositions filed in a lawsuit alleging discriminatory lending practices.

The two lengthy depositions, recently unsealed in federal court in Chicago, support car dealer Gerald Gorman's claims that racist attitudes at Chrysler Financial influenced lending policies toward African-Americans as well as his ability to earn a living from dealerships in Midlothian and on Chicago's South Side, according to Gorman.

A Chrysler Financial spokesman declined to comment on the depositions Tuesday but said the company does not tolerate racial bias.

Taken last month, the depositions quote Chrysler Financial managers James Schultz and Timothy Devine as saying that their superior, the former Chicago zone manager for the company, regularly used slurs when referring to African-Americans. The manager no longer works for DaimlerChrysler.

In his testimony, Schultz recalled the manager's reaction to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

"The one that sticks out in my mind that disturbed me and probably other people in the room was, we were in collections and it was Martin Luther King Day and the delinquency was high and, you know, we were off, and he didn't like that and he just said, `Hey, let's shoot four more and give us the whole week off,' along those lines," Schultz said.

Schultz took that to mean four more African-Americans, he said.

Devine testified that in his six weeks working under that manager, he heard the man use a racial slur at least six times.

Devine also testified that he once heard another top Midwest manager use a racial slur but that he could not recall the exact term.

"He said that ... `Down South we refer to them as' something, and I don't know what that something was, but it was a racially derogatory remark," Devine said.

He testified that he heard that manager use a racist term on another occasion directed at Arabs.

That manager, who oversaw all of Chrysler Financial's Midwest operations, is still with the company but has been transferred to the Detroit office, Chrysler Financial spokesman James Ryan said.

Ryan declined to comment on the depositions because he had not seen them, he said.

Despite the company's anonymous complaint system, neither Schultz nor Devine knew of any grievances filed against either top manager, they testified.

In a federal lawsuit filed in February, Gorman alleged that a racist culture at Chrysler Financial caused loan analysts to redline prospective buyers suspected of being African-American because of their names and the locations of the dealerships where they sought credit.

Gorman also alleged that Chrysler Financial employees and managers could use their computer system to flag and deny loan applications from dealerships in African-American neighborhoods.

Ryan has said the company's loan application system is colorblind and fair.

Testimony in the Schultz and Devine depositions, however, seems to affirm that Chrysler Financial loan analysts could manipulate data sent from dealers about prospective buyers.

Devine said a credit manager told him of an instance in which a loan analyst changed income information for a buyer, though the change was not related to race.

In the basement of his Orland Park home Tuesday, Gorman said the depositions left him feeling "100 percent vindicated."

"It's obvious if anybody reads the transcripts [of the depositions] that the office was so inundated with a racist attitude that no one could have been exempt from that behavior," he said.

Gorman claims that because he came forward with allegations of racism, Chrysler Financial officials punished him by taking away his inventory of cars, thus destroying his business.

Ryan has said the cars were seized in October to pay debts Gorman owed the company.

Gorman's attorney, Christopher O'Hara, said there will be more testimony along the lines of Schultz's and Devine's that will tie racist attitudes directly to the company's loan practices.

Information gathered in Gorman's case likely will be used in a second suit filed by African-American customers.