At first, Medro Johnson tried to shrug it off.

The African American employee of Sears Home Improvement Products in Natomas was at an August 2008 company barbecue with his family, court records say. A co-worker walked up and blurted a racial slur, issued with a "slave dialect."

"Medro calls me Masta," co-worker Paul St. Hilaire said, according to court records.

Then St. Hilaire started laughing.

Johnson, an Elk Grove resident and a descendant of slaves, would later testify in court that he was humiliated to be referred to as a slave in front of his wife, son and daughter.

Last Friday, after a one-month trial and more than eight hours of deliberation, a Sacramento Superior Court jury gave Johnson the last laugh.

The panel awarded him $5.2 million in damages, including $2.2 million to compensate for lost earnings, pain and suffering.

The other $3 million was for punitive damages, an award granted after the jury found that Sears' policymakers and managers conducted themselves "with malice, oppression or fraud" for failing to investigate or to act on Johnson's complaints about the slur and other racist acts.

The motivation for ignoring the problem?

Christopher Whelan, Johnson's attorney in the race harassment-retaliation case, said the evidence showed the company did not want to take action against St. Hilaire, one of its top sales producers nationally.

"The message for Sears is that it just can't ignore the law, no matter how much money the harasser earns for them," said Whelan. "They subjected Medro to very serious risks and fear of retaliation.

"And they stepped over the line," he said, "with subsequent acts by management to avoid being exposed for failing to follow the law."

The verdict came more than two years after Whelan, of Gold River, and his nephew, co-counsel Brian Whelan of Fresno, filed suit in Sacramento Superior Court.

On Tuesday, attorneys for Sears Home Improvement, Sears Holdings Corp. and St. Hilaire referred questions to a company spokesman.

"We are very disappointed in the verdict, and we are exploring all of our post-trial options, including appeal," spokesman Chris Brathwaite said in an email on behalf of Sears. "We have no further comment at this time."

St. Hilaire, who later left the company, could not be reached for comment.

Johnson, 49, who calls himself a private person, said his life has been turned upside down. He lost his job and faces the prospect of losing his Elk Grove house because of the struggle to make ends meet. A foreclosure sale could occur as early as next month.

Two months after his December 2008 dismissal, Johnson received his real estate sales license in a down market. He now works for Coldwell Banker Elk Grove.

"I've been in a constant struggle since 2008," Johnson said in an interview. "Once we depleted all our savings, our retirement, our kids' college fund, then it got really tough.

"It's scary before you get down to the end. Then it's tough when you try to figure out how you're going to make ends meet and, at the same time, fight this battle against this huge corporation that doesn't really care about you."

The "Medro calls me Masta" remark wasn't the last racially charged encounter Johnson would have with St. Hilaire while working at the home improvement company, court records show.

Both Johnson and St. Hilaire would visit clients to sell home improvement products.

On one outing in October 2008, according to the lawsuit, matters would grow worse. The two exchanged angry words and St. Hilaire told Johnson, "I'm going to get you and you're not going to see it coming."

Johnson complained to supervisors about the threat and the "Masta" comment from two months earlier. The lawsuit notes that nothing came of the complaint.

Managers told Johnson that both he and St. Hilaire would be terminated if he took his complaint to human resources, documents say.

"That was a threat designed to intimidate him and shut him up," said Christopher Whelan.

In the final encounter, Whelan said, St. Hilaire repeatedly "bashed" Johnson with his shoulder during breaks in a company training session in December 2008.

At one point, St. Hilaire called Johnson the "N" word and, ultimately, bashed him again, knocking Johnson's hot coffee down the front of his shirt. Attorneys said St. Hilaire muttered the epithet so that Johnson could hear it.

When St. Hilaire leaned in again for what appeared to be another bash, Johnson said, he hit the salesman in the lip with the back of his hand.

This time there were plenty of witnesses. The company fired Johnson two days later. But, his attorneys said, St. Hilaire faced no discipline and no corrective training.

On Tuesday, Johnson said he was pleased with the jury's decision.

"I feel like justice was served, and I would hope that the award will send a message to Sears and that they will change their behavior so no one has to suffer like I had to suffer over these years," he said.

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