Woman gets $1m in damages after gas station worker told her: 'I don't serve Black people'

A 63-year-old woman has been awarded $1 million by a jury during the trial of a case wherein she accused an attendant at a gas station of refusing to serve her because she was black.

Rose Wakefield, of Portland, Oregon, sued Jacksons Food Stores after Nigel Powers, an attendant at the gas station in Beaverton kept her waiting as he continued to serve other white customers who arrived after her.

She claimed that when she went inside the store to ask for help about the same, an employee offered to help, but Powers laughed in her face and said, "I don't serve black people."

"I was like, 'What world am I living in?'" Wakefield told KGW. "This is not supposed to go down like that. It was a terrible, terrible confrontation between me and this guy."

According to a news release from her lawyer, the woman called Jacksons Food Stores twice to complain about the incident, but was largely ignored. Powers was fired a month after the incident, it said.

Her lawyer Greg Kafoury said that $1m also included a $550,000 punitive damage fee. "This company deserved to be publicly humiliated just as they had publicly humiliated my client by calling her a liar in court for four days when she had been telling the truth," he said.

However, Jacksons Food Stores has said that it disagrees with the jury's verdict, according to a report in The New York Times.

"After carefully reviewing all facts and evidence, including video surveillance, we chose to take this matter to trial because we were comfortable based on our knowledge that the service-related concern actually reported by the customer was investigated and promptly addressed," said Cory Jackson, the president of Jacksons Food Stores.

"As such, we respectfully disagree with the jury's ruling because our knowledge does not align with the verdict."