Judith Vladeck, who died Monday at 83, helped set new precedents in a series of sex- and age-discrimination lawsuits.

Among the companies that she sued and won or settled with were Chase Manhattan, Union Carbide, and Shearson Lehman Brothers, which agreed in 1993 to a $16 million settlement to compensate middle managers who felt they had been cheated when the firm merged with E.F. Hutton.

In an earlier case, Kyriazi v. Western Electric, Vladeck won an early sexual discrimination in the workplace lawsuit for her client, an engineer who was the subject of a rude cartoon at her job.

“I used to keep it in a red folder at the counsel table,” Vladeck told the New York Times. “Whenever I thought the judge’s attention was flagging, I’d start to wave it around.”

If she was known for flamboyant conduct in the courtroom, her comments outside could be provocative. She was a pioneer in establishing equal pay for women in university settings, including in cases she brought against New York University and City University of New York. In one famous incident, she told the press, “If we were to calculate the real back pay in this case, they’d have to take Brooklyn College and City College and auction them off to pay the damages.”

This despite — or perhaps because — she was an alumna of Hunter College.

Vladeck’s concern with sex discrimination went back at least as far as her legal training. During the Depression, her parents moved in with relatives in Flatbush, and she attended George Washington High School and then Hunter before going to law school at Columbia University, where she graduated as one of only 26 women in a the 174-member class of 1947.

The law school didn’t do much to help Vladeck find a job. “The dean there thought women students were just taking places that should have gone to guys leaving the Army,” her son, Bruce Vladeck, said.

After having three children and working as a part-time lawyer, Vladeck in 1957 joined her husband’s firm, Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, one of the leading employment law firms in the city. Sex- and age-discrimination lawsuits began coming her way as Congress passed new laws, and Vladeck’s name on a lawsuit became a signal to settle. In one case that she was especially proud of, her son said, construction firms at Battery Park City agreed to take on low-income women as apprentices and journeymen. The new headquarters of Non-Traditional Employment for Women, which she represented in that case, was later named in Vladeck’s honor.

Judeth Pomarlen Vladesk
Born August 1, 1923, in Norfalk, Va.; died January 8 of complications of an infection; survived by three children, Anne, Bruce, and David, and five grandchildren.