High-flying finance exec and girlfriend sued by nannies who claim they were ... trends now
A high-flying Wall Street financier and his girlfriend are being sued by two nannies who are accusing the pair of racism.
Cordia Foster was hired by millionaire Ian K. Snow and his girlfriend Elyse Dula as a nanny for their four children in August 2017. Cislyn Wright was then hired a year later in September 2018.
The two Jamaican women lived with the couple at their home in Manhattan and at their summer rental in the Hamptons.
Snow - whose firm, co-founded with Gilded Age scion Ogden Phipps II, has $2.4 billion in assets - paid $2 million to rent the Bridgehampton home for three months in the summer of 2020.
But the two women claim that they were subjected to racial abuse in Manhattan and the Hamptons - referred to as 'dirty Jamaicans' and 'black b******', and accused of theft and trespass.
Ian K. Snow, a Wall Street financier, is pictured at a Manhattan party in February 2016. He and his girlfriend Elyse Dula have been accused of racism by the former nannies for their four children
Snow in 2020 rented this mansion in Bridgehampton, paying $2 million for the period from Memorial Day to Labor Day - a new Hamptons record
Snow and Dula have vehemently denied using racial slurs, and accuse Foster and Wright in turn of threatening to 'use black magic' on the family. They say the nannies were fired for a litany of complaints, including using their cell phones excessively and being 'hostile' to Dula.
Foster and Wright were fired in August 2020, and the following year sued for discrimination.
Court documents filed shortly before Christmas, at the District Court for the Southern District of New York, agreed the terms of the jury's verdict sheet, and the trial is believed to be imminent.
Foster and Wright, in their complaint, claim that they were stereotyped from the beginning.
They were recruited via an exclusive and prestigious New York City-based agency, British American Household Staffing.
Snow and Dula are believed to live between Manhattan and a Long Island mansion previously owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Snow paid $9.1 million in 2011 for the 11-bedroom, early 20th-century Colonial mansion, which Murdoch asked presidential decorator Michael Smith to refashion.
The home is listed in court documents as Snow and Dula's main residence.
'For much of their employment with Defendants, Plaintiffs were stereotyped as nonthreatening, nurturing, large-framed black women who exist solely to serve,' the pair allege.
They claim they noted differences in the way they were treated, compared to other members of staff.
'Both Defendants often conspicuously treated Plaintiffs as if they were 'invisible' - for example, upon entering a room occupied by Foster or Wright and a non-black servant, Defendants would often greet, smile to, and talk with the nonblack worker while acting as if Foster or Wright did not exist.'
Foster and Wright claim that a personal assistant, Tamela Walsh, told them: 'Elyse hates you Jamaicans.'
She further added, Foster and Wright allege: 'Elyse [Dula] always tells me to spy on you guys'.
Snow is seen in the offices of Snow Phipps, which he co-founded with Ogden Phipps III
They say they shrugged off the perceived slights, and continued caring for the four children.
The situation escalated, they claim, in January 2020, when the family got a kitten named Scotty.
