Webster, Fredrickson, Correia & Puth is noted for its representation of a 1,100 member, world-wide class of female job applicants in a decades-long suit against the United States Information Agency, Hartman v. Rice.  The case settled for $508 million plus interest, fees, and costs.  The case represents, by far, the largest employment discrimination award in the history of the Civil Rights Act.

The Hartman case was filed in 1977 by WFHCP partner Bruce Fredrickson, alleging discrimination in the hiring of women at the United States Information Agency (USIA) and Voice of America (VOA). The case began when Carolee Brady Hartman was rejected for a journalist job USIA because they were “looking to hire a man” to fill the position. After a trial, Fredrickson ultimately proved class-wide sex discrimination against women in hiring at the USIA and VOA. The class included jobs in six broad professional categories, including writers, editors, broadcasters, producers, technicians and foreign service officers.

After an early appeal by the class, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found in 1984 that the USIA and VOA had discriminated against the class based on large statistical disparities in the hiring of women. After another trial on remedies for the class, the court in 1988 decided that each class member would have her relief decided at a hearing. 1,100 women filed claim forms for participation in the case.

After the USIA was ordered to hire a number of women, the government took two appeals of the case in 1991 and 1994, challenging the entire class action case. Ultimately, the class prevailed, and trials on individual class members' claims began in 1996.

At the individual trials, the plaintiffs proved that the defendant used several mechanisms to discriminate against women, For instance, the court and the special master found that the USIA and VOA:

• Manipulated qualifying test results to lower the scores of women and raise the scores of men to ensure that men received jobs;
• Destroyed or altered personnel documents
• Exhibited hostility toward women seeking full time jobs. Judge Charles R. Richey wrote for the District Court:
  

  For example, class members were told upon applying for positions that the Agency needed "a balance of voices," that the Agency was seeking males to fill particular positions, that employment might have a negative effect on an applicant's marriage, that there were "enough women in the Foreign Service at mid-level," that men had to be hired first, that hiring a female would incur additional travel expenses for the Agency, that technical jobs were "mainly for men," that a woman's place was "at the stove, not on the air," that it is not good procedure to have too many women, that the Agency was looking for "male voices," that one supervisor did not want "that many girls around," that a broadcaster position was not a good idea for an applicant with small children, and that one applicant should stay home and take care of her baby.

Hartman v. Duffey, 158 F.R.D. 525, 540 (D.D.C. 1994), aff'd 88 F.3d 1232 (D.C. Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1240 (1997).

Of the 48 trials that were presented, 46 class members won their trials and were awarded $25 million in lost pay, plus retirement and hiring relief. With the last of three monetary distributions to class members in 2005, the Hartman  settlement paid out over $532,000 to each of the nearly 1,100 women in the class. 

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