Dennis J. LEWIS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BROWN & ROOT, INC., Defendant-Appellee

GEE,

Circuit Judge:

The record in this case paints a convincing picture of the sort of civil rights action that should never have been filed.

Plaintiff Dennis J. Lewis is a thirty-year old black native and citizen of Trinidad, W.I. He had two years of schooling there to become a pipefitter and served an apprenticeship in that trade at the Shell Chemical plant in Trinidad. In 1976, at the age of twenty-three, we find him at work in Texas for defendant Brown & Root as a pipefitter’s helper. In December of that year he was discharged for absenteeism. Between then and the year 1980, he was rehired…