Women Kicked Off Napa Valley Wine Train File $11M Racial Discrimination Suit

A group of women kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train for being too loud are now planning to file an $11 million lawsuit against the company.

Members of the Sistahs on the Reading Edge Book Club, all but one of whom is African American, have alleged they were marched down several aisles of a train and ordered off mid-trip for laughing too loudly during a birthday celebration.

Three days after the incident, the wine train’s chief executive officer apologized to the group, saying they should not have been ejected and a company employee “made a bad situation worse” by initially posting a Facebook message that erroneously accused the book club members of giving train staff “verbal and physical abuse”.

The company said in a statement on Thursday that it has hired a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent to investigate the incident, adding that it takes “allegations of discrimination very seriously”.

Wine Train CEO Anthony “Tony” Giaccio already issued a formal apology admitting “The Napa Valley Wine Train was 100 percent wrong in its handling of this issue”. The women filed an $11 million lawsuit for racial discrimination, defamation and breach of contract.

The women, who all live in Antioch, east of San Francisco, have retained Waukeen McCoy, a San Francisco attorney.

Singer had previously said that while the company regretted the way the women were treated, guests are removed monthly for loud or rowdy behavior and a lot of them are not African American.

‘Laughing while black – that’s the only thing we were guilty of’. Once the train reached St. Helena, they were escorted through each of the other train cars to the front of the train, where they got off the train to waiting police.

At a press conference on Thursday, McCoy said: “This lawsuit shows that blacks are not just being treated different in big cities, but also in small towns like Napa”.

Two of the women – a nurse and a bank/credit card company employee – say they lost their jobs because of news reports about the incident and comments made about them on social media. Two hours later, train workers told the women that other passengers had complained about their noise level and that it had become a problem.

McCoy said Thursday that St. Helena police had never been called to escort passengers from the wine train, disputing a statement from public relations expert Sam Singer, who was hired after the incident, that train officials had to remove passengers about once a month. Also pictured are plaintiffs Katherine Neal, from left, Georgia Lewis, Lisa Johnson, Sandra Jamerson, Debbie Reynolds and Allisa Carr.

In this June 2, 2011 file photo, a couple takes pictures at the back of the Napa Valley Wine Train as it makes its way through California.

An earlier effort by the Wine Train to offer the women a private vehicle and a complimentary party for 39 guests was refused.