Secunda On Retaliation Against Medical Benefits Claims

Our own Paul Secunda was recently quoted in the Chicago Tribune on a disturbing case in which it is alleged that an employee was terminated to avoid the medical claims made on behalf of her terminally ill husband.  The employer argued that the termination was caused by a performance problem, which the district court accepted in dismissing the case.  However, the Seventh Circuit remanded the case, holding that there were problems with that argument, including the fact that the employee had always received great reviews, the termination was based on a single phone call in which the employee refused to come into work on her vacation day while she was hours away, and that the employer had urged her husband to go into hospice care (with evidence indicating a possible motive of reducing medical claims to the self-insured plan).  Paul (and others') take:

Experts say more conflicts of this kind are likely as economically stressed employers confront escalating health-care costs and the reality that a small number of sick employees or family members account for the vast majority of medical expenses.

"With the economic crisis and the health-care crisis, individuals with employer-provided health care are extremely vulnerable," said Paul Secunda, an employment law specialist and associate professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee.

As hundreds of thousands of Americans have discovered recently, employers are free to fire workers or terminate benefits to cut costs. But discriminatory action against employees who have disabling medical conditions is not permitted, said Steven Greenberger, an associate dean at DePaul University College of Law.

Lawsuits charging such discrimination will probably become more common in the next year, experts predict, because of changes to the Americans with Disability Act that took effect Jan. 1. The law bars discrimination against the disabled and, in some circumstances, against their associates.

Stay tuned for the trial.

-JH