$2,000 a Word

Edward Crandle Washer, 40, of Los Angeles is a stubborn David who declared war on the Goliath-sized Bank of America seven years ago. By last week he was close to winning: 1) his war, 2) $125,000.

The battle began back in 1937. Washer, a $165 trust-department clerk, campaigned to unionize the bank workers --7,200 of them in 494 branches.

A few months later he was transferred to Chico, Calif, (pop: 5,500) over his protests that it was "Siberia." The bank also wrangled with its intransigent clerk over a $15.12 expense account (the bank eventually paid). Soon Clerk Washer was fired. The NLRB ordered him reinstated.

The bank issued a sharp, 64-word statement (which Washer later quoted in his complaint): "We cannot see how this institution could possibly reinstate anybody who had admittedly falsified his expense account . . . been guilty of flagrant insubordination, who called inhabitants of the community in which he was working 'yokels' and 'country bumpkins' and labeled the town 'Siberia.' " The bank fought up to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost (thereby establishing the right of bank employes to organize under the Wagner Act), finally reinstated Washer with $5,503 in back pay. Washer then sued the bank for $250,000 for libel, was fired again.*

Fortnight ago, a jury in San Francisco's Superior Court awarded Washer $125,000 as a result of the bank's statement, approximately $2,000 a word. The bank promptly appealed. Last week Washer planned to ask the NLRB once more to give him his old bank job back.

*While jobless, Washer paid $25 for a painting in a secondhand bookstore in Los Angeles. Later, art experts verified it as an old master by Italy's Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, appraised it at $100,000. Washer still has it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.