Abramian Awaits Harvard Millions

On paper, Viatcheslav "Steve" Abramian is a millionaire. Two years ago, a Middlesex County jury handed down a verdict awarding the former Harvard security guard over $1.2 million in an anti-discrimination suit.

But from his bed in a Jamaica Plain homeless shelter, he's still waiting for his money.

Six years ago, Abramian lost his home and car after he was dismissed from his Harvard post, in what the jury later ruled was discrimination based on national origin and retaliation for his complaints.

Now the University's lawyers are appealing the decision, questioning the trial judge's conduct in the case. Oral arguments before the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) will be slated for the coming months.

Abramian is also preparing for the next round of an extended court battle, but he's eager to get on with a future he envisioned long before he was forced to leave Harvard.

He wants to be a diplomat with a PhD. In March, he'll earn his master's degree from Northeastern. And he's told his lawyers that a small out-of-court settlement isn't enough.

"At least I survived the most difficult time," he says. "If Harvard doesn't want to settle with me, I have no choice but to continue my fight."

Life on the Streets

Abramian, a small man with gray hair, dresses in a baseball cap and plaid shirt--much like the other students in the Northeastern University library.

He lowers his voice when he discusses his life over the past six years. He doesn't want other students to know he's homeless, he says.

Every morning since he lost his home six years ago, he has woken up at 6:30 a.m. The Shadduck Men's Shelter in Jamaica Plain requires its guests to pack up and leave by 7:30 a.m.

And every day, he has returned to the shelter between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. to check in for the night. Though recently his social worker has allowed Abramian to come in a bit late because he has a steady job, the shelter's rules are strict.

"No one reserves a place for me," he says. " If I come in late, I lose [my] bed...Everyday I wasn't sure if I'd have a place to sleep."

He says he tries to keep clean in the shelter and takes a half-hour subway trip each way to do laundry.

During the day, Abramian works as a security guard at Northeastern University--doing the same job he performed at Harvard, but without union recognition and for considerably lower wages. At Harvard, he earned $13 an hour and received Blue Cross/Blue Shield medical insurance. Now, he earns $8 an hour and gets no benefits.

Abramian's current employer is Security Systems Incorporated (SSI)--the same firm to which Harvard has begun to outsource its security operations. It's an irony Abramian appreciates.

Harvard's decision to hire SSI is "extra proof" that his job performance is up to Harvard's standards, Abramian says.

"If I were a bad man, SSI wouldn't keep me," he says.

When at Harvard, Abramian could take classes at the University--where he was enrolled as a "special student"--for a nominal fee of 10 percent of tuition.

Now he says he works overtime through SSI to pay his tuition at Northeastern, where he is studying for a master's degree in comparative government and international relations.

He finds he still doesn't make enough to pay for adequate housing or to study full-time.

"He's spending every penny he has trying to get the education he was getting originally," says John G. Swomley, one of Abramian's attorneys in the case.

Abramian has no family in the United States and has not told any of his relatives in Russia that he is homeless. They would wonder, he says, why he bothered to come to America just to be homeless.

Coming to America

Things were different when Abramian first came to the United States, where he hoped to get an education.

He worked for a Boston software company for a short time after defecting from the Soviet Union in 1981, but didn't enjoy the job.

So he took a job as a security guard at Harvard--the "best job for students," he says, since it leaves time to concentrate on schoolwork.

With SAT scores in the upper 7th percentile in math and the upper 20th percentile in English, Abramian was accepted to Harvard as a "special student" and took a mix of Extension School and regular Faculty of Arts and Sciences classes. His favorite professors included Theda Skocpol, now professor of government and sociology, and Richard Pipes, a Cold War expert and Baird research professor of history.

His Harvard job also allowed him to purchase a car and a condominium in nearby Acton, Mass.

"It was easy for me," he says. "I lived in my condominium, had a car. I took two classes each semester and summer--six classes for 10 percent of [tuition]."

But once he lost his job at Harvard, Abramian could not afford to take classes without the employee tuition discount. He was unable to make payments on his car or house, and was quickly out on the streets.

"I started to build my life, because I'm an immigrant," he says. "I lost [my] condominium, I lost [my] car. Nobody will give me credit for 10 years. For my life I lost everything."

While Abramian says he does not regret complaining about his treatment, he says he would not have lost his job if he had kept quiet about the anti-Russian slurs that were directed against him.

He says others on the staff--including a number of Chinese Ph.D. students who, like him, were using the job to pursue degrees through the University--endured the same mistreatment, but did not complain.

"They didn't fight, but right now they're professors," he says.

Although the jury rejected Harvard's account of Abramian's dismissal, the University's allegations of aggressive and dishonest behavior made Abramian virtually unhireable.

"I couldn't find [a] job, maybe because I was terminated for fighting, for filing [a] false report," he says. "Who needs me?"

Abramian ultimately found a job teaching math and computer science to disadvantaged kids in a local college preparation program. And he won acceptance to the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

With a letter of admission and Harvard no longer his most-recent employer, he was able to find a security guard job again and begin to finance his education.

Harvard Plays Hardball

As Abramian worked to rebuild his life, the University strategized for its appeal of his legal case.

While the 50-year-old immigrant was represented by two lawyers who had never handled an anti-discrimination case before, Harvard hired the venerable Boston law firm Ropes & Gray to assist in their defense.

According to Abramian's lawyers, the University made no settlement offer above $15,000 during the trial--none of which would have gone to Abramian, since $17,000 of any settlement would go to the lawyer who did pre-trial work on the case.

And while Abramian was not represented by counsel after his initial lawyer withdrew from the case, he says, University Attorney Allan A. Ryan tried to convince him to settle for less than 0.1 percent of the damages he was seeking.

"Ryan said: 'Let's settle this. How about $1,000? Soon it will be Christmas,'" Abramian recalls. Abramian, who does not celebrate Christmas, says he found Harvard's tactics bullying. Ryan declined to comment on the incident or to confirm that it had occurred.

Doherty says Harvard's confidence may have been one reason why the University did not make larger settlement offers throughout the trial.

"I think what happened was the Harvard lawyers said, these are a couple guys who do indigent criminal defense, we don't have to take them seriously because they're not from big law firms," Doherty says. "They just walked into this blind alley, and we were waiting for them."

"We were much better prepared," he adds. "Frankly, I don't understand what the Harvard lawyers were thinking of, because we had 20 witnesses on their witness list, and they never offered any reasonable settlement offer at all. They were pretty confident that they were going to win the trial."

But Ryan says Harvard took the legal challenge seriously from the beginning.

"I have one rule and that is never underestimate your opponent," he says. "And I didn't underestimate anyone here."

Back to Court

As it pursues aggressive appeals through Massachusetts' highest court, Harvard is clearly taking Abramian's case seriously now. If the verdict is upheld, it will be the first time Harvard has been found to have discriminated against an employee.

The University is well within its legal rights in not paying Abramian the jury verdict, since the appeals process in the case is ongoing and a new trial on at least part of the damages against the University seems inevitable.

Abramian's trial judge has already acknowledged that he failed to instruct the jury that it had to find the University's actions "outrageous" in order to award punitive damages, a sum that would attempt to prevent Harvard from discriminating again.

The University also believes the trial judge committed other errors in his jury instructions during the trial, which would invalidate the jury's decision on compensatory damages to Abramian.

But Abramian is asking the SJC not to hold a new trial on any component of the jury award. Instead, his lawyers are asking the SJC to declare the judge's incorrect jury instructions "harmless error," such that the punitive damages could be reinstated and no new trial would be held.

But with a new trial likely on at least part of the judgment, the case could continue for another several years and even go through another round of appeals after the second jury trial.

Both sides have made plea offers in the case, but neither regards a settlement as likely.

"We went into negotiations at one point in time as a result of the appeals court ordering us to," Swomley says. "We sat in front of a retired judge and the judge shuttled back and forth from room to room and concluded that Harvard was no where near us in their offers."

The University has made some offers, Swomley says, but generally only offered as much as the compensatory portion of the judgment.

Harvard, of course, has time on its side. Until it exhausts all of its appeals, the University is not obligated to pay out a single cent of the jury verdict.

"That's one of the mechanisms that a discriminator or a loser in a civil trial has in bargaining you to a better deal," Swomley says.

But after six years of waiting for compensation from Harvard, Swomley says Abramian has more in mind than money.

"He has a very strong feeling that Harvard needs to be punished for what they've done," Swomley says. "The longer this takes the more he hardens in that resolve because basically what they keep doing is denying that they've done anything."

Abramian puts it more plainly.

"It's over five and a half years," he says. "It is my life, and no one can compensate five years of life."

Six years after losing his job, Abramian still carries around his Harvard ID card in his wallet.

People who see it are impressed, he says. He used to be impressed too.