Fired IBM Manager to Get Age Bias, Race-based Retaliation Trial

A jury must decide whether IBM fired a second-line manager in its embedded solutions agreement group because he was 58 years old and complained about race discrimination against a Black sales representative, the Western District of Washington ruled.

Scott Kingston complained about bias against Jerome Beard after Beard’s commissions were cut on a pair of deals that should have paid him roughly $3 million. Beard separately sued International Business Machines Corp. in California federal court, and he and the company settled and dismissed that case June 15.

Kingston has evidence his termination was tied to his backing Beard, the U.S....