ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 27, 1996 TAG: 9611270046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
Avis knew of race charges before suit
ARLINGTON - A former employee of Avis Rent-A-Car says the company's customer service center routinely forwarded to corporate headquarters a file of racial complaints at Avis outlets in North and South Carolina, USA Today reported today.
The paper said it obtained an affidavit by Carolyn Williams in which she says she bundled copies of complaints against Carolina franchisee John Dalton and mailed them to senior officials at Avis World Headquarters twice a month.
She said copies of complaints, many of which continued charges of racial bias, were mailed to Robert Vadnais, director of licensees, and to Diane Karl, head of quality assurance at the headquarters.
Williams' affidavit comes after three black women filed a discrimination lawsuit against Avis, the second-largest car rental company in the United States, and Dalton's franchise, New Hanover Rent-A-Car Inc., in Wilmington, N.C. The women claim they were denied service. Former employees said Dalton trained his staff to avoid renting to black people.
- Associated Press
Court orders Florida to let prisoners go
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Some 400 killers, rapists and thieves were freed from prison Tuesday and another 80 can go home for the holidays because of a state Supreme Court ruling that they must be given time off for good behavior.
The court ruled last month that rules governing inmates' sentences can't be changed after their crimes were committed. Last week, it refused to let the state delay the releases until the U.S. Supreme Court hears the case.
Gov. Lawton Chiles was disappointed with the mass release but said the ruling only moved up by a few months what would have happened anyway.
About 25,000 ex-convicts from Florida's 60,000-inmate population are released each year - an average of 69 felons every day. The Legislature passed a law last year requiring inmates to serve 85 percent of their sentences, starting with those whose crimes were committed on or after Oct.1, 1995.
- Associated Press
Court: No rush on smoking ban
WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court has rejected an attempt to force the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to finish its workplace smoking ban.
OSHA in 1994 proposed banning smoking in 6 million workplaces, from office buildings to bars, because government health officials had declared secondhand smoke a carcinogen.
Two years later, the rules aren't written. One OSHA employee works on them full time, slogging through hundreds of thousands of public comments the agency received about the proposal.
John Banzhaf, of the anti-tobacco Action on Smoking and Health, petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals to make OSHA speed up, arguing the agency had broken its own deadlines for rule making.
But the appeals court rejected his petition Tuesday, calling it improper to intervene.
OSHA insists it needs time to prepare the regulations properly so they can withstand challenges, and the appeals court agreed.
- Associated Press
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