North Shore orderlies file discrimination suit

Bill San Antonio

Two orderlies at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset have filed a discrimination lawsuit against a pair of co-workers who they say harassed them with racial slurs and nooses.

The lawsuit alleges that Elijah Crawford and Ishmael Cox were regularly subjected to discriminatory treatment due to their race by Dr. Charles Militana, an anesthesiologist, and Mario Nistico, a surgical technician, both 59, for whom the plaintiffs have worked at the hospital since the late 1990s. 

“Where I work, there are a lot of educated people with an immature way of behaving,” Crawford, 43, told the New York Daily News last week.

The suit alleges that Nistico told Crawford “he had big lips because he was black” and “that his hair was like a big Brillo Pad.”

In addition, Militana allegedly made remarks regarding to the size of Crawford’s genitals, “how dumb he was for voting for a black man” and accusing Crawford “of wanting to vote for Obama just because he was black.”

“How can Obama be smart? He is black,” Militana said, according to the suit.

Militana is also alleged to have told the 63-year-old Cox, “It’s about time they brought in some Whites here.”

In the summer of 2011, Crawford saw a noose hanging from a light fixture in an operating room he was assigned to clean, according to the suit, which Nistico admitted to hanging.

A year later, Nistico hung another noose from his locker in a dressing room Crawford and Cox frequented. 

“When I see a noose, it’s a statement of racial hate,” Crawford told the Daily News. “It’s a threat. It’s a sign of terrorism.”

Nistico told the Daily News he regretted placing the noose in the locker room, which he said was a “goof” directed at another surgeon who had been difficult to work with and prompted those working in the operating room to complain they wanted to “hang themselves.”

Nistico said the noose came as a result of a conversation with Militana concerning capital punishment and how one could be decapitated if the hanging scaffolding was built too high.

“Dr. Militana asked if I knew how to make a noose,” Nistico told the Daily News, and the two left one they made in the locker room as an afterthought.

“It was something that was done that was stupid on my behalf,” Nistico told the Daily News.

North Shore University Hospital spokesman Terry Lynam said he was unable to comment on the case, but said the hospital did not report the incidents to Nassau County Police and instead conducted an internal investigation after the initial complaints. 

Lynam said “the matter was addressed with all the people involved immediately after the incident and that it was also addressed to the apparent satisfaction of the two plaintiffs.”

According to the suit, the investigation resulted in “half-hearted” apologies from Nistico and Militana, though Nistico told the Daily News he was suspended without pay for one week and ordered to attend a class on workplace behavior.

Lynam said that reports of Nistico’s suspension were “accurate.”

Derek Smith, who represents the plaintiffs on behalf of the Manhattan-based Derek Smith Law Group, PLLC, told the Manhasset Times the defendants’ use of nooses was no coincidence and was made with intended racial bias.

“For anyone to say, “Oh, well, it’s just a dumb joke, there were no racial overtones or implications because it was a noose,’ is simply laughable,” Smith said. “If you ask any reasonable, normal person what’s the first thing they think of when they see a noose left on someone’s locker and the person is black, they’re going to think racial hatred.”

The Manhassett hospital did not report the noose incidents to the Nassau County Police Department and conducted an in-house investigation that resulted in “half-hearted apologies” from Nistico and Militana, both 59, the suit states.

“They (the hospital) wanted to cover it up,” Cox, 63, said.

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