Way back in November 2005, a suit was filed on behalf of George McReynolds, a 22-year Merrill Lynch (Merrill Lynch news) veteran in Nashville, Tennessee, accusing the Thundering Herd of discriminating against African-America brokers in various ways. Specifically, the firm was accused of steering these employees into clerical jobs, giving lucrative accounts to others and generally creating a hostile work environment.

On the surface anyway, this is the stuff of class-action suits, but a judge gave Merrill Lynch a victory this week by denying such status to the suit, for which there are 700 plaintiffs. If the ruling stands, individuals will have to separately pursue their cases.

There would likely be hundreds of trials--the likelihood of which may form the basis of an appeal. We'd all like to think that overt discrimination is now an anachronism. But there are likely more subtle forms of bias at work, especially in the brokerage industry.

We're still at the point where trials of this sort just might bubble up some interesting, perhaps even shocking, information about management-employee interaction at this level. There is still the possibility that this case could prove an embarrassment to Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).

For more:
- here's the article

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