Harassment Case Has Golfer, 86, in the Rough

Comes now before our court of public opinion one Danny Cohen, resident of Woodland Hills and “life member” of Braemar Country Club since 1959. Around Braemar, it is said, everybody knows Danny. To know Danny, however, is not necessarily to like him, as Florence Troha will attest.

Irascible and outspoken, Cohen is an 86-year-old bantam rooster of a man, his slight stature shrunken by age and cancer of the colon. For 16 years he has used a colostomy bag, but that hasn’t stopped him from golfing four days a week and being a stickler for the game’s etiquette and Braemar’s house rules. Flout the dress code or fail to replace your divot and you’ll hear about it from Danny.

But just past the ninth hole of the west course, in the vicinity of Florence Troha’s snack shop, Danny Cohen has allegedly broken some more serious rules. Assault, sexual battery, false imprisonment--these are some of the charges that Troha, 54, leveled in a civil suit filed quietly last October.

The allegations paint Danny Cohen as a dirty old man and then some. Many of the verbal advances Troha describes are too lewd to print here. More serious are the charges that, on various occasions, he had forced a kiss on her, “grabbed her breasts” and “grabbed her wrist and forced her hand on his crotch.”

Danny Cohen tells a very different story, denying the worst allegations. Troha says she has witnesses to some of Cohen’s naughty banter, but Cohen’s attorney says the most serious charges boil down to she said/he said.

But all that is par for the course in such cases. No, what’s really novel about Troha v. Cohen, apart from the defendant’s age, is the defense strategy: That it’s all Braemar’s fault.

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Braemar management has so far declined comment on the cross complaint recently filed by Cohen, alleging “negligent supervision.” When Braemar’s attorneys do respond in civil court, they will have to address the arguments of Cohen’s attorney, Jonathan G. Gabriel, that the standards for sexual harassment, typically associated with the workplace, should apply to an environment such as Braemar as well.

Think about it: In the workplace, it’s up to management to educate employees, enforce the rules, discipline the transgressors. If both Danny Cohen and Florence Troha had a clear set of guidelines to follow, Gabriel suggests, the “intensifying pattern” of harassment Troha alleges would have been nipped in the bud--and Cohen would not have been exposed to litigation.

Keep in mind that Braemar is not the sort of snooty, restrictive club that is owned and essentially policed by its own members. Braemar is owned by a for-profit corporation. If you can afford it, you can join. This is all the more reason, Gabriel argues, that Braemar was negligent in its supervision of members such as Cohen and employees and independent contractors such as Troha. An element of Gabriel’s argument is that Cohen is too old to know better--all the more reason, he says, that Braemar should adopt and enforce sexual harassment policies.

In court papers, Gabriel first contends that allegations of verbal misconduct against Cohen “are essentially frivolous” and “describe verbal conduct which is common among the primarily male golfers at any golf club. . . .

“Cross-Complainant”--that would be Cohen--”believes that, as a matter of law, a male golfer should not be liable for language that would normally be considered sexually offensive, and that if indeed such language is to be actionable on a golf course, then golf clubs such as the Club owe a duty to their older male members to educate and warn them about the dangers of engaging in such verbal conduct while playing golf. For example, club members such as Cross-Complainant should be warned that they cannot call female employees of the Club ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart,’ and that they cannot tell a dirty joke to their golf buddies while playing a round of golf or while sitting at the bar, for fear that a female employee of the Club will overhear them and sue for verbally abusive conduct.”

Braemar, the argument goes, failed both to protect Troha from behavior she considered offensive and Cohen from a lawsuit he considers frivolous--”half of which alleged conduct is completely and utterly benign, and the other half of which alleged conduct occurred based entirely on the word of the Plaintiff.”

Florence Troha, a Simi Valley resident, says her suit is anything but frivolous and Cohen’s conduct anything but benign.

“It got worse and worse and worse until you can’t take it any more,” she says. “He knows everything he did. He’s not senile.”

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Growing old is hell, Danny Cohen told me as he sat on a sofa in a den filled with memorabilia of his love for golf and horseback riding. Garaged outside were other passions--the Rolls-Royce, the Jaguar V-12, the Corvette. His memory slips often, he says, but he knows that this lawsuit is “ridiculous.” Louise, his wife for the last 35 years, offers a visitor a glass of water.

The way Danny Cohen tells it, he and Florence had been friends for 20 years. He’d tease her about finding her a husband. “Make sure he has money,” she would tell him.

He joined Braemar when it opened. He founded this committee and that committee. Helped junior golfers, helped make sure hundreds of trees were planted. “Never got a golf ball, never got a thank-you letter.” He has his friends there, but he’s made so many enemies. They’ve egged Florence on, he figures, and now “she smells money.”

Louise, it is clear, has her own questions about who did what to whom. Tempers flare before Danny’s lawyer escorts Louise out of the den.

“I’m in trouble at the club,” Danny Cohen mutters. “And I’m in trouble at home.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Ca. 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.