A jury said the bank fired her after she complained of bias.
HACKENSACK -- A bank must pay a former employee nearly $1 million for retaliating against her after she complained of gender discrimination.
A Bergen County jury ruled in May that Hudson City Savings Bank and former president Denis Salamone fired Santa Mallon after she complained about gender discrimination.
Mallon, 64, of Mahwah, had worked for Hudson City since 1975 and was promoted to a first vice president at the company in 2004. Mallon spoke to her supervisor at the end of 2010, believing she was due for a promotion to senior vice president, according to court documents.
Her superiors, including Salamone, instead accused her of violating company policies and stripped of several responsibilities, the complaint said. Mallon went from overseeing 60 employees to 10.
"She gets blamed for the violations while the manager who approved them who was a male and his superior had nothing happen to them," Bruce Atkins, a partner with Hackensack firm Deutsch Atkins, which represented Mallon, said.
Bank agrees to record settlement
Mallon wrote Salamone in July 2011, saying she believed the demotion was due to discrimination. She reiterated her belief in September, and was fired shortly after.
Atkins and co-counsel Carly Meredith said e-mails between Mallon's supervisors made it clear she was being retaliated against.
"We believe that we had a clear case of retaliation going into trial," Meredith said.
The jury voted 8-0 in finding that Hudson City retaliated against Mallon for making a protected claim of discrimination. They also ruled, by a vote of 7-1, that Salamone played a role in the retaliation.
However, the jury dismissed Mallon's claim of gender discrimination. The jury awarded Mallon $935,000 in damages.
Since the suit was filed in 2013, Hudson City merged into M&T bank, based in Buffalo, N.Y. Salamone joined the board of directors.
Before the merger went through in November 2015, Hudson City agreed to a record $32.72 million settlement with the federal government over allegations that it avoided mortgage loans in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. It was the largest mortgage redlining settlement in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.