Brown Harris Stevens ordered to pay $788G to fired Black agent who charged retaliation
Shauncy Claud, a former agent at Brown Harris Stevens, was awarded nearly $788,000 over allegations the brokerage retaliated by firing her after she had complained about racial discrimination. Credit: Courtesy of Shauncy Claud
A federal judge awarded a former Hamptons real estate agent nearly $788,000, ruling that her former brokerage, Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons, retaliated against her when it fired her over a customer complaint in 2017.
The firing occurred two weeks after Shauncy Claud, now 35, had told a manager she felt she was treated differently than her white peers.
Claud, who grew up in Southampton, had joined Brown Harris Stevens in November 2016 after previously working with the East End brokerage Town & Country. She was the brokerage’s only Black agent and one of two Black employees or agents across the brokerage’s six offices during the time she was employed from 2016 to '17, according to the decision.
“Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons suddenly and callously cut short the highly promising career of a young real estate agent who was, at the time, the only Black person in a comparable role at the entire firm,” wrote U.S. District Judge Nina R. Morrison in the decision. The firm “gave Shauncy Claud no explanation for her sudden termination, and its actions deprived her of any viable path to pursue her dream of a career as a real estate agent in the community where she was born and raised."
Morrison awarded Claud $787,896.68 in damages, including economic damages for earnings she would have made at BHS as well as $300,000 in damages for emotional distress. The judgment also includes $200,000 in punitive damages with the goal of deterring BHS and other real estate agencies from engaging in retaliation.
“An award of punitive damages may serve to deter [BHS] and comparable firms from retaliating against employees who, like Claud, have the courage to raise good-faith claims of racial discrimination with management,” Morrison wrote.
Claud told Newsday she found the experience empowering in that a federal judge ruled her account of the events was credible.
“I needed to tell my side of the story and get some assistance from a legal perspective,” she said in an interview. “There really wasn’t any other way to try to rectify the situation and hold them accountable for how awful they treated me.”
A spokesman for Brown Harris Stevens said the brokerage has mandatory anti-discrimination training that meets and exceeds government requirements. The spokesman said the firm is in the process of filing an appeal and declined to comment on whether those policies were in place in 2017, when the events of the case took place, citing the potential appeal.
"Brown Harris Stevens is committed to a workplace free of discrimination and has had in place — and is committed to — a comprehensive Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation Prevention Policy long before the decision in this case, which involved unique and unprecedented circumstances, which will be reviewed on appeal," the spokesman said in a statement.
In June 2017, eight months into her tenure with BHS, Claud approached senior executive manager Aspasia "Cia" Comnas to express concerns about how she had been treated by senior executive director Robert Nelson, according to her testimony.
“Claud has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that BHS intentionally retaliated against her after she complained of discriminatory treatment in the workplace on or about June 14, 2017, and terminated her for that reason, not because of the information Comnas allegedly learned about Claud’s 'rudeness' in a June 29, 2017, phone call,” Morrison wrote.
She cited comments Nelson made that referenced her race, such as when she went into his office to ask him a question and during the conversation he commented that she was “the only Black agent in the Hamptons,” according to her testimony.
On another occasion, when Claud discussed updating open rental listings that had been inactive, which would have allowed her to represent those listings and to earn a commission, Nelson commented that Claud was a “pit bull” who “like[s] to take things from others,” according to her testimony.
Claud's attorneys, Oliver Koppell and Daniel Schreck, did not seek to prove these comments represented illegal racial discrimination. They only sought to prove that Claud's complaint about discrimination was protected under the law and that BHS then retaliated against her. Koppell is a former New York State attorney general.
She also alleged that Nelson, who is now an executive managing director at BHS, treated her differently than other agents when she sought support and guidance from him, which Nelson disputed in his own testimony. Judge Morrison found Claud’s description of the event to be credible.
Claud alleged Nelson reassigned listings for which Claud had been working to represent the homeowner to other agents.
The inciting incident that BHS said led to Claud’s firing was a phone call from the daughter of a property owner whose home Claud had listed. The daughter called Claud to ask about offers on the home and express frustration over a reduction in the price of the listing. But Claud had received instructions from the property owner not to speak with anyone else about the sale of the property.
Claud declined to answer the daughter’s questions and said the woman began to scream at her using expletives, according to Claud’s testimony. Claud hung up the phone believing she had followed her client’s instructions to not speak with others about the property.
The daughter then called Comnas to complain about Claud’s conduct. While Comnas testified both the property owner and her daughter had called to complain, Judge Morrison wrote that contemporaneous notes support only that the daughter had called.
“It is my conclusion that Comnas belatedly claimed that [the property owner] herself was on the call for the purpose of providing an added veneer of legitimacy to the adverse employment action she took against Claud on June 29-30,” Morrison wrote.
Comnas said in an email to Nelson that Claud would need to be fired immediately and the brokerage would need to change the locks on its Southampton office to prevent her from breaking in and damaging the office. She referred to Claud as “the type of person who could come back and do damage," according to court documents.
Nelson and Comnas did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Morrison ruled that Comnas and BHS used the phone call as a pretext for firing Claud. Comnas left the brokerage to work as an independent real estate brokerage consultant in October 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The bench trial in the case, which was held in February, included testimony from one of Claud’s former clients who commented on her professionalism and diligence in working to market his home.
Claud learned of her firing through a companywide email sent to 140 to 150 people. She had missed the message informing her she had been let go that was sent to her personal email four minutes earlier.
After her firing, Claud joined real estate firm Nest Seekers International but said she had trouble overcoming the negative impression potential clients had that she had switched among three brokerages in two years.
In January 2018 she enrolled at SUNY Oswego and completed a degree in finance and economics the following year. She now lives in Atlanta, works in real estate acquisitions and is enrolled in a master's degree program in legal studies.
Claud said she doesn’t plan to work as a sales agent again because she doesn’t have the same network in Atlanta that she had in Southampton, where both her parents and grandparents lived.
“My sphere of influence was there. I knew the Hamptons like the back of my own hand,” she told Newsday. “It’s a lot different when you’re connected to someplace than moving to a brand-new city."
She hopes the case brings awareness to what she described as a lack of diversity among agents and management in East End real estate.
The way discrimination impacts people is "more pronounced in the East End than in other areas because living through that experience, I just don't really get the impression that diversity and representation matters or is important,” she said.
A federal judge awarded a former Hamptons real estate agent nearly $788,000, ruling that her former brokerage, Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons, retaliated against her when it fired her over a customer complaint in 2017.
The firing occurred two weeks after Shauncy Claud, now 35, had told a manager she felt she was treated differently than her white peers.
Claud, who grew up in Southampton, had joined Brown Harris Stevens in November 2016 after previously working with the East End brokerage Town & Country. She was the brokerage’s only Black agent and one of two Black employees or agents across the brokerage’s six offices during the time she was employed from 2016 to '17, according to the decision.
“Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons suddenly and callously cut short the highly promising career of a young real estate agent who was, at the time, the only Black person in a comparable role at the entire firm,” wrote U.S. District Judge Nina R. Morrison in the decision. The firm “gave Shauncy Claud no explanation for her sudden termination, and its actions deprived her of any viable path to pursue her dream of a career as a real estate agent in the community where she was born and raised."
WHAT TO KNOW
- A federal judge awarded a Black real estate agent nearly $788,000 after she sued Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons for retaliation.
- Shauncy Claud had expressed concerns to a manager about discrimination against her two weeks before she was fired over a complaint by the daughter of one of her clients.
- U.S. District Judge Nina R. Morrison said she awarded punitive damages to serve as a deterrent to BHS and other firms who retaliate against employees who raise claims of racial discrimination with management.
Morrison awarded Claud $787,896.68 in damages, including economic damages for earnings she would have made at BHS as well as $300,000 in damages for emotional distress. The judgment also includes $200,000 in punitive damages with the goal of deterring BHS and other real estate agencies from engaging in retaliation.
“An award of punitive damages may serve to deter [BHS] and comparable firms from retaliating against employees who, like Claud, have the courage to raise good-faith claims of racial discrimination with management,” Morrison wrote.
Claud told Newsday she found the experience empowering in that a federal judge ruled her account of the events was credible.
“I needed to tell my side of the story and get some assistance from a legal perspective,” she said in an interview. “There really wasn’t any other way to try to rectify the situation and hold them accountable for how awful they treated me.”
A spokesman for Brown Harris Stevens said the brokerage has mandatory anti-discrimination training that meets and exceeds government requirements. The spokesman said the firm is in the process of filing an appeal and declined to comment on whether those policies were in place in 2017, when the events of the case took place, citing the potential appeal.
"Brown Harris Stevens is committed to a workplace free of discrimination and has had in place — and is committed to — a comprehensive Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation Prevention Policy long before the decision in this case, which involved unique and unprecedented circumstances, which will be reviewed on appeal," the spokesman said in a statement.
Retaliation after bias complaint
In June 2017, eight months into her tenure with BHS, Claud approached senior executive manager Aspasia "Cia" Comnas to express concerns about how she had been treated by senior executive director Robert Nelson, according to her testimony.
“Claud has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that BHS intentionally retaliated against her after she complained of discriminatory treatment in the workplace on or about June 14, 2017, and terminated her for that reason, not because of the information Comnas allegedly learned about Claud’s 'rudeness' in a June 29, 2017, phone call,” Morrison wrote.
She cited comments Nelson made that referenced her race, such as when she went into his office to ask him a question and during the conversation he commented that she was “the only Black agent in the Hamptons,” according to her testimony.
On another occasion, when Claud discussed updating open rental listings that had been inactive, which would have allowed her to represent those listings and to earn a commission, Nelson commented that Claud was a “pit bull” who “like[s] to take things from others,” according to her testimony.
Claud's attorneys, Oliver Koppell and Daniel Schreck, did not seek to prove these comments represented illegal racial discrimination. They only sought to prove that Claud's complaint about discrimination was protected under the law and that BHS then retaliated against her. Koppell is a former New York State attorney general.
She also alleged that Nelson, who is now an executive managing director at BHS, treated her differently than other agents when she sought support and guidance from him, which Nelson disputed in his own testimony. Judge Morrison found Claud’s description of the event to be credible.
Claud alleged Nelson reassigned listings for which Claud had been working to represent the homeowner to other agents.
The inciting incident that BHS said led to Claud’s firing was a phone call from the daughter of a property owner whose home Claud had listed. The daughter called Claud to ask about offers on the home and express frustration over a reduction in the price of the listing. But Claud had received instructions from the property owner not to speak with anyone else about the sale of the property.
Claud declined to answer the daughter’s questions and said the woman began to scream at her using expletives, according to Claud’s testimony. Claud hung up the phone believing she had followed her client’s instructions to not speak with others about the property.
The daughter then called Comnas to complain about Claud’s conduct. While Comnas testified both the property owner and her daughter had called to complain, Judge Morrison wrote that contemporaneous notes support only that the daughter had called.
“It is my conclusion that Comnas belatedly claimed that [the property owner] herself was on the call for the purpose of providing an added veneer of legitimacy to the adverse employment action she took against Claud on June 29-30,” Morrison wrote.
Comnas said in an email to Nelson that Claud would need to be fired immediately and the brokerage would need to change the locks on its Southampton office to prevent her from breaking in and damaging the office. She referred to Claud as “the type of person who could come back and do damage," according to court documents.
Nelson and Comnas did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Morrison ruled that Comnas and BHS used the phone call as a pretext for firing Claud. Comnas left the brokerage to work as an independent real estate brokerage consultant in October 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The bench trial in the case, which was held in February, included testimony from one of Claud’s former clients who commented on her professionalism and diligence in working to market his home.
Left Hamptons, changed careers
Claud learned of her firing through a companywide email sent to 140 to 150 people. She had missed the message informing her she had been let go that was sent to her personal email four minutes earlier.
After her firing, Claud joined real estate firm Nest Seekers International but said she had trouble overcoming the negative impression potential clients had that she had switched among three brokerages in two years.
In January 2018 she enrolled at SUNY Oswego and completed a degree in finance and economics the following year. She now lives in Atlanta, works in real estate acquisitions and is enrolled in a master's degree program in legal studies.
Claud said she doesn’t plan to work as a sales agent again because she doesn’t have the same network in Atlanta that she had in Southampton, where both her parents and grandparents lived.
“My sphere of influence was there. I knew the Hamptons like the back of my own hand,” she told Newsday. “It’s a lot different when you’re connected to someplace than moving to a brand-new city."
She hopes the case brings awareness to what she described as a lack of diversity among agents and management in East End real estate.
The way discrimination impacts people is "more pronounced in the East End than in other areas because living through that experience, I just don't really get the impression that diversity and representation matters or is important,” she said.
Jonathan LaMantia covers residential real estate and other business news on Long Island. He previously covered the business of health care for Crain's New York Business.