The Class Action book by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, published by Doubleday in 2002, tells the story of Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., the first sexual harassment lawsuit in American history to be certified as a class action. It follows a group of women iron miners in northern Minnesota through a decade of litigation against their employer, ending in a $3.5 million settlement on New Year’s Eve 1998.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. Anchor reissued the book in paperback in 2003, and it became the basis for the 2005 film North Country.
What the Book Is About
The book’s full title is Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law. Its subject is a lawsuit filed in August 1988 by Lois Jenson and Patricia Kosmach against Eveleth Mines and its parent company, Oglebay Norton, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Minnesota Human Rights Act.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. Their attorney, Paul Sprenger of the Minneapolis firm Sprenger & Lang, wanted to try something no lawyer had attempted before: litigate sexual harassment as a class action, arguing that a hostile environment can be pervasive enough to affect every woman in a workplace.2American RadioWorks. Class Action
Bingham, a former Newsweek White House correspondent, and Gansler, a lawyer who has practiced securities law and alternative dispute resolution, split the reporting along their strengths. Gansler handled the legal architecture; Bingham traveled to the Iron Range and spent time in local bars building trust with plaintiffs and some of the men involved in the case. They drew heavily on depositions and courtroom testimony from the three trials that preceded the settlement, which Bingham called “gold” because they could be checked against what people told her in interviews.3Drafting the Past. Clara Bingham Lets Her Sources Speak for Themselves
The Women and the Mine
Lois Jenson, a single mother, was hired in 1975 as one of the first women to do hourly work at the Eveleth Mines Forbes Fairlane Plant. She took the job because it paid $5.50 an hour and included health insurance, far better than the minimum-wage credit union work she had been doing.4Minnesota Historical Society. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. Women never made up more than five percent of the hourly workforce.5Justia. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 824 F. Supp. 847
The book documents what those women faced: pornographic graffiti and imagery, crude jokes, unwanted touching and grabbing, stalking, and threats of sexual violence. There were no bathroom facilities for women. Many avoided drinking water on their shifts and developed bladder and kidney infections.6National Women’s History Museum. The Real Women of North Country Starting in 1983, a senior engineer sent Jenson a stream of suggestive letters. When she reported the harassment, management did nothing. Her 1984 complaint to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights resulted in a finding of probable cause, but a proposed resolution of $11,000 and adoption of a harassment policy fell apart when the company refused to pay.4Minnesota Historical Society. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co.
How the Case Moved Through the Courts
In December 1991, U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum certified the class, defined as all women who had applied for or held hourly positions at Eveleth Mines since December 30, 1983. That order made Jenson the first sexual harassment class action in American history. Rosenbaum found “pervasive offensive conduct” at the mine, while noting that the law did not require a workplace “worthy of a Victorian salon.”7American RadioWorks. Class Action
The litigation was split into liability and damages phases. In May 1993, Judge Richard Kyle ruled that Eveleth Mines was liable for maintaining a hostile work environment and for sex discrimination in promotions; no woman had ever been promoted to “step-up foreman,” the gateway to permanent supervisory jobs. The court ordered the mine to adopt a sexual harassment policy and provide employee education.5Justia. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 824 F. Supp. 847
The damages phase is the part of the book most reviewers found hardest to read. A retired federal magistrate, Patrick J. McNulty, was appointed Special Master to determine compensation. Defense attorneys pursued what plaintiffs’ lawyers called a “nuts or sluts” strategy, obtaining the women’s medical records from birth and questioning them in open court about their sexual histories, mental health, and past relationships.8The Washington Post. A Hostile Workplace McNulty allowed that discovery while barring the plaintiffs from presenting expert psychiatric testimony on the emotional harm the harassment had caused.9Legal Momentum. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. He treated the mining culture of the Iron Range as a mitigating factor for the company and recommended individual awards ranging from $2,000 to $25,000.10CaseMine. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 130 F.3d 1287
The plaintiffs appealed. In December 1997, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the damages award. Senior Judge Donald Lay opened the opinion by describing the case’s “long, tortured, and unfortunate history,” and the panel found that McNulty had applied the wrong legal standard for causation, improperly excluded expert testimony, and erred by treating the Iron Range’s culture of harassment as something that lessened the company’s responsibility.11vLex. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 130 F.3d 1287 The case went back for a new jury trial on damages. Before it began, the remaining fifteen plaintiffs and Oglebay Norton settled for $3.5 million on New Year’s Eve 1998.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co.
Patricia Kosmach
One of the book’s central figures is Patricia Kosmach, Jenson’s co-plaintiff and one of the lawsuit’s early organizers. She had worked at the mine for thirteen years and was known as tough, feisty, and a natural leader.12American RadioWorks. Pat Kosmach In January 1989, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As her condition worsened, defense attorneys tried to depose her in the hospital while she could no longer speak.6National Women’s History Museum. The Real Women of North Country She died in 1994 at age 57, six years before the case closed, and because she did not live to the settlement her family received nothing. Some of her ashes were scattered from an airplane over the open pit of the Eveleth mine. A friend recalled Kosmach saying she was going to “haunt them forever.”
Reception, Film, and Legacy
Class Action was named a Los Angeles Times best book of the year and won the American Association of University Women’s Speaking Out for Justice Award.13BookBrowse. Clara Bingham Bob Woodward called it “brilliantly reported, documented and written.” David Halberstam described it as “fascinating and chilling,” comparing its intensity to Silkwood. Jeffrey Toobin wrote that it offered “an unsparing look at the real nature of judicial progress” and the personal costs of even the most dramatic courtroom victories, revealing truths about the legal system that transcend “the tidy conclusions of judges’ opinions.”14Clara Bingham. Class Action
Reviewers returned again and again to the toll the case took on the women who brought it. Many plaintiffs came out of the litigation with PTSD and chronic exhaustion.15Sojourners. Lois Jenson, Iron Miner and First Person to Win Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Jenson never got the apology she wanted. The mining company and its insurers spent more than $15 million defending the suit, more than four times what the plaintiffs ultimately received.16Clara Bingham. Reviews – Class Action
In 2005, Warner Bros. released North Country, directed by Niki Caro, with Charlize Theron playing a fictionalized version of Jenson. The film drew directly from the events in Class Action, and Theron and Frances McDormand were both nominated for Academy Awards.13BookBrowse. Clara Bingham Jenson and several other former miners worked on the film’s set.15Sojourners. Lois Jenson, Iron Miner and First Person to Win Sexual Harassment Lawsuit In April 2006, the Hibbing, Minnesota chapter of the AAUW honored the real plaintiffs.6National Women’s History Museum. The Real Women of North Country
The case at the heart of the book established a legal framework for using class action litigation to challenge a hostile work environment as a systemic pattern rather than a series of individual incidents, and it remains a reference point in employment law and the history of workplace rights for women.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co.