Jury Upholds Harassment Claims Against Knicks' Thomas

The cost to the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden will reach far beyond the $11.6 million a federal jury decided Madison Square Garden and its chairman must pay in damages to former executive Anucha Browne Sanders over her harassment lawsuit.

The jury found that the Garden owes $6 million for allowing a hostile work environment to exist and $2.6 million for retaliation. MSG chairman James Dolan owes $3 million.

"What I did here, I did for every working woman in America," said Browne Sanders, who came out of the courtroom beaming. "And that includes everyone who gets up and goes to work in the morning. It's for also the women who don't have the means and couldn't possibly have done what I was able to do."

Photographer: David Karp/Bloomberg News/Landov

Thomas and the other defendants, Madison Square Garden and MSG Chairman James Dolan, were sued for $9.6 million by Browne Sanders, a former marketing executive who made $260,000 a year.

U.S. District Judge Gerard Lynch called it an "eminently reasonable" verdict.

"I'm innocent, very innocent, and I did not do the things she has accused me in this courtroom of doing," Thomas said. "I'm extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case. I will appeal this, and I remain confident in the man that I am and what I stand for and the family that I have."

The Garden said it will appeal, and Thomas will keep his job.

Unbelievable.