Kennesaw settles race bias lawsuit

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Kennesaw has settled a racial harassment lawsuit filed by two city employees and a former worker for $1.8 million, according to documents obtained under Georgia’s Open Records Act.

Of that amount, $800,000 came from city taxpayer funds and the rest was to come from the city’s insurer, said City Attorney Randall Bentley.

The three plaintiffs will split just over $1 million from the settlement. The rest will go to the law firm that represented them — Buckley & Klein LLP — to pay for legal costs.

Mayor Mark Mathews, who signed the settlement in July, declined to comment, citing a section of the 28-page document that requires confidentiality. Ed Buckley, who represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said his clients also did not wish to comment.

The city did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which requires the lawsuit to be dismissed.

Filed in March in U.S. District Court, Atlanta, the suit detailed racist e-mails circulated among city workers and a pattern of racial insensitivity in the city’s Public Works Department.

John Dowdy, who was a defendant in the suit and who was accused of writing some of the racially disparaging e-mails while he served on Kennesaw’s City Council, resigned from the council after the lawsuit was filed.