Tentative agreement in Napa Valley Wine Train suit

Eleven women who were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train in August - prompting the hashtag #Laughingwhileblack - have agreed to settle their racial discrimination lawsuit with the hospitality company, their attorney said Monday.

The details of the settlement remain confidential, said attorney Waukeen McCoy of San Francisco, who represents the 10 black women and one white woman who brought the lawsuit. The wine train’s owners still must agree to the settlement’s terms, he said.

“Hopefully this was a learning experience for a lot of businesses,” McCoy said.

The women’s treatment, he said, showed that many companies need to give their employees diversity and sensitivity training.

In October, the women, most of them members of an East Bay book club called Sistahs on the Reading Edge, filed an $11 million federal lawsuit claiming discrimination and defamation after they were escorted off the train at St. Helena, part way through their excursion.

Both sides agreed the women had been laughing while on the train and had been asked at least twice by staff to be quiet. Staff members requested police to meet the train when it stopped at St. Helena, but officers quickly realized they had been called out for a civil, not a criminal, matter.

The women said they grew angry afterward when the Wine Train Facebook page published a post on the incident that said in part: “Following verbal and physical abuse toward other guests and staff, it was necessary to get our police involved.” Wine Train representatives said the post was inaccurate and soon removed from the site. But outrage exploded across social media with overwhelmingly critical reactions.

Three days later, the Wine Train’s CEO issued an apology, saying the company had been “100 percent wrong” and staff members had erred by not seating the women in a part of the train more conducive to a large group.

Even so, Lisa Johnson, the book club’s president and one of the black women on the trip, said the experience had made her feel as if she had been “transported back in time and these were tales my grandmother and great-grandmother should have been telling me about.”

Messages left for the Wine Train’s attorney and the company that handles the Wine Train’s media inquiries weren’t returned Monday.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit