Nineteen months after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began a federal discrimination lawsuit against well-known financial firm Morgan Stanley (see WIT for Sep. 7, 2001), settlement talks remain stalled. Attempts by a district court judge to move the talks forward by pressuring the chairpersons of the company and the commission to negotiate in person before him for three hours yesterday failed, with the sides agreeing only to continue talks to try and avoid a trial. The EEOC filed the case---an action rarely taken against major Wall Street firms---after the company failed to settle with a female former employee determined by the EEOC to have been discriminated against on the basis of sex, and fired after filing a complaint.
See "Morgan Stanley and U.S. Agency Fail to Settle Sex Bias Lawsuit", PATRICK McGEEHAN, The New York Times, April 15, 2003