• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, May 15, 2013

Barring a last-minute settlement, a racial discrimination case against the Interpublic Group of Companies is expected to go to trial next month.

This week, a U.S. District Court Judge in New York ruled that a failure-to-promote claim based on race filed by longtime IPG legal department employee Joy Noel could proceed to trial -- now set to commence on June 3, per the court’s order.

The ruling came in response to a motion to dismiss Noel’s case that was filed by IPG earlier this year. While granting the company’s request to dismiss a retaliation claim, Judge Harold Baer ruled that the failure-to-promote charge could be tried on the condition that the plaintiff submits a sworn affidavit or verified amended complaint by May 23 “attesting to her personal knowledge of the facts alleged.”

Noel’s attorney Eric Sanders said that his client would file the required paperwork and that the case would go forward. As a result of the decision, he said, Noel “will get an opportunity to tell a jury” her side of the story.

Noel, who is Trinidadian, filed her suit last year after being passed over for a promotion to executive assistant to the general counsel. The position was awarded to a white woman.

In his decision, Judge Baer noted Noel’s claim that the person making the decision about filling the post -- former IPG associate general counsel Marjorie Hoey -- had “never promoted [plaintiff] or any other person of color to a front office position.” He also cited her allegation that she was not informed beforehand that experience interacting with the IPG board of directors was a prerequisite for the promotion. It was only after she was passed over that she was told of that lacking qualification.

Baer noted that board experience “appears nowhere in defendant’s written list of job requirements,” and that Noel’s overall experience demonstrates that she was “at least minimally qualified for the promotion to executive assistant.”

That said, Baer noted that IPG argued that then general counsel Nicolas Camera had “specifically advised” that the promoted candidate have board experience. Based on the “inconsistencies” of the arguments on both sides, Baer ruled, “the true significance of this ‘board experience’ is thus a credibility issue that only a jury may decide.”

IPG did not have an immediate response to the decision.

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