Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 12, 1995                   TAG: 9508140062
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MONTGOMERY, ALA.                                 LENGTH: Medium

MALE-VS.-MALE SUIT SETTLED

A federal jury ruled in favor of Ford W. Prescott on Wednesday, but Prescott settled with his former employer and supervisor for an undisclosed amount before the jury began considering damages.

``It is one of the first - if not the first - that has gone to trial with a plaintiff verdict involving male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace,'' said Prescott's attorney, Jay Lewis.

Prescott, 43, was staff supervisor in the Montgomery office of Independent Life and Accident Insurance Co. of Jacksonville, Fla., before he was fired by his boss, Tommy Lee Meeks, in 1993 after 13 years with the company.

Prescott complained that his boss ``was hitting on him, touching him and fondling him,'' Lewis said. Prescott said Meeks once grabbed his crotch and kissed him on the neck at a party.

``I'd tell him to quit and then he'd start back,'' Prescott said in a deposition.

At a sales meeting in Las Vegas in April 1993, when a group went to a nightclub, Prescott said Meeks followed him into the restroom.

``He came into the stall and grabbed my pants and put his hand down my pants,'' Prescott's deposition said.

Meeks, 37, said Prescott was fired after he spread false rumors in the office that Meeks was gay. Meeks, who later was fired himself for an unrelated reason, denied that anything improper occurred.

Michael Widomski, spokesman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said 10 percent of the sexual harassment complaints filed last year were from men. He said the agency doesn't have statistics on how many involved allegations of male-on-male harassment.