Employee’s unwanted birthday party nets him $450k after lawsuit
kentucky.com
kentucky.com
Employer put him into a bad situation against his will, when he'd warned them and it wasn't necessary for his job, and then fired him when he had the reaction he'd foreseen. Obvious wrongful termination and horrific management.
> The employee, who was hired in October 2018 by Gravity Diagnostics, did not want a celebration because “being the center of attention” can trigger his disorder, the documents state.
And now it's all over the news where he'll be the unwanted center of attention all over again.
Edit: Actually, the Link NKY article referenced in OP clears this up, and it appears that no evidence or testimony of any violence was ever offered. The first set of opinions are obviously one-sided, but it seems clear from the last paragraph in quotation here that there was no real violence.
> “They way [the Gravity Diagnostics employees] say it, they believed he was enraged and possibly about to get violent,” Bucher said.
> Berling has never demonstrated any violence, Bucher said, and someone who is suffering a panic attack becomes almost paralyzed with fear; they don’t often lash out.
> “Basically what the argument was is he was fired for having a panic attack,” Bucher said. “They made assumptions that he was dangerous based off of his disability and not off of any evidence that he was violent.”
> If he had made violent gestures, Bucher said, Gravity Diagnostics would have had grounds to fire him, but he didn’t do anything threatening.
> ...
> With ever-increasing incidents of workplace violence, Brazil said, the verdict sets a dangerous precedent for employers and employees that unless physical violence occurs, workplace violence is acceptable.
In this case the company forced an employee against his expressed will to be the center of attention of a “party” and triggered his condition. This IS violence - from the side of the employer.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever read. "This sets a dangerous precedent that violence is OK so long as it doesn't actually happen." Lady, what have you been smoking??
Sounds like the violence was NOT a real thing.
> “Basically what the argument was is he was fired for having a panic attack,” Bucher said. “They made assumptions that he was dangerous based off of his disability and not off of any evidence that he was violent.”
> If he had made violent gestures, Bucher said, Gravity Diagnostics would have had grounds to fire him, but he didn’t do anything threatening.
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
>He started to have another panic attack, Bucher said.
>“At this point he starts employing other coping techniques that he’s worked on for years with his therapist,” Bucher said. “The way he described it is he started hugging himself and asked them to please stop.”
>Bucher said the two employees in the conference room asked Berling to stop, and when he didn’t, they walked out. Once the panic attack had subsided, Bucher said, Berling walked out of the conference room and was asked to leave the building. He was let go a couple of days later.
>“They way [the Gravity Diagnostics employees] say it, they believed he was enraged and possibly about to get violent,” Bucher said.
Edit: Why are people disagreeing with this? It's literally 2 questions and it seems the temperature was the issue when looking at culpability.
Edit 2: someone here provided the additional type of information that I was interested in. It wasn't just the temperature, but also that the cup had a design flaw that made it likely to collapse if you took the lid off. Thanks!
From the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...
> she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent.[14] She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg) (nearly 20 percent of her body weight), reducing her to 83 pounds (38 kg). After the hospital stay, Liebeck needed care for three weeks, which was provided by her daughter.[15] Liebeck suffered permanent disfigurement after the incident and was partially disabled for two years.
I'd highly recommend looking up details of the case if you think it was frivolous.
If that's the case (and no reason to disbelieve the plaintiff), that's a superheated liquid. In other words, it is a liquid above its own boiling point and waiting for a cavitation event (something for bubbles to hold on to) to instantly boil. And this seems to coincide with the coffee explosion and burns from the plantiff.
Mythbusters video of an example of superheated water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OXM4mr_i0
> Since Liebeck, McDonald's has not reduced the service temperature of its coffee. McDonald's current policy is to serve coffee at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C),[37] relying on more sternly worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future liability, though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee.[37][38] The Specialty Coffee Association of America supports improved packaging methods rather than lowering the temperature at which coffee is served. The association has successfully aided the defense of subsequent coffee burn cases.[38] Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C).
So according to this page you've linked, the coffee was not unusually hot and McDonalds and Starbucks are presently serving coffee just as hot that could give you 3rd degree burns today.
(Since people in this thread seem so jumpy, let me explicitly disclaim that I think the lawsuit and outcome were warranted because she was severely burned as a consequence of McDonald's defective cup design.)
Well, yes and no. The temperature of the coffee was only partially the reason. What made McDonald's actions appear malicious rather than accidental (therefore increasing their culpability) was the fact that McDonald's knew the coffee was too hot but continued to serve it anyway.
It quite literally burnt/melted part of her vagina onto her leg/part of body that was not her vagina. I think pictures are out there if you google for them, it’s been quite a while but IIRC pretty gruesome.
Downthread? Because you're being obtuse and, when people answer, asking a bunch more questions that you could easily google the answers to. It's not coming off as a good-faith discussion.
Of course some people really do intentionally be difficult, but OP's question was not near enough info to conclude that, and his additional responses were after he got slammed with downvotes (which usually bother people)
The questions read as slanted. This is a warning sign that you're dealing with someone who's already made up their mind and is just looking to argue. That "just" especially is... a red flag.
That on its own might not mean much, but then, there's this entire post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31042870
Which looks like a continuation of exactly that kind of thing. Asking questions in a one-sided way, demanding others do things for you even when they already pointed you in the right direction, hostile tone, et c. Even if done innocently, this style of posting can't be tolerated because it's a beloved trolling/shitposting tactic.
Someone else on here brought up that the design of the cup was defective. That was the type of information I was looking for. Even some Google searching was not bringing up that for me, probably because like this thread, most people are focused on just the injury and the temperature. The cup issue really added to my understanding of the case, and answered my question about why it was not a frivolous case.
I'll let it stand as a general description of why people may react negatively to certain kinds of post.
I think what I'd do here is start a new top-level comment like "Some other comments are talking about the McDonalds thing. Does anyone have any more details on this? Was it just that the coffee was too hot, or where there other factors that made that a lawsuit?"
I'm similar, but I've come to recognize that the default of communication is asshole, and the best method to avoid that is to ensure you're meeting others halfway in a conversation.
I imagine most would agree that the parent comment's statement "Why was the McDonald's one not frivolous? Was it just because it was 185 degrees?" comes off as somewhat ignorant in that they could have done a quick Google search or asked less defensively if they genuinely wanted an answer. Their followup comment is even worse.
Another commenter brought up the defective cup design here. This was the type of info I was looking for related to culpability that I couldn't find. This is what I like about HN - the google search results were not useful since it's (appearently) such a divisive topic, but a well informed HN'er had the additional info.
McDonalds already had multiple successful suits against them about this very thing.
The lady in question got incredibly serious burns on her legs.
She originally sued only for medical expenses, and McDonalds wasn't interested in settling.
The award was later reduced.
If the answer to bad corporate behaviour is not regulation, but rather lawsuits, then that lawsuit perfectly encapsulated the series of legal escalations necessary to deal with a bad corporate actor, that has been alerted of a problem in their product, and refuses to resolve it.
Ok, then I want to hear the reasoning behind those rulings/awards.
"The lady in question got incredibly serious burns on her legs."
That's an outcome/result. That has no real bearing on the culpability.
"She originally sued only for medical expenses, and McDonalds wasn't interested in settling."
Again, nothing speaking to culpability here.
"The coffee was much hotter than the industry standard."
Ok, so this is basically what my comment said. It seems 185 is about 20 degrees higher than other restaurants. It also has a warning on it (jury said it's not big enough, but maybe we should have everyone sign waivers first?).
"legal escalations necessary to deal with a bad corporate actor"
Depends on your viewpoint as to who is "bad".
Edit: why disagree with this?
It just seems like you are very set in your views and are demanding that we all argue with you, and if that's the case, make a new post about the mcdonald's case because this thread isn't even about that.
Then, the case was rediscovered by a popular podcast ("You're Wrong About") so a lot of people now have the opposite perspective and anger at how it all played out.
None of this justifies downvoting and I upvoted you. But I can understand how people might see someone asking questions as performing a "just asking questions!" legerdemain.
I'd say online communities have been having this reaction for at least a decade. In 2011 a documentary came out partially about the case, Hot Coffee, and since then most mentions of the McDonalds case I've seen have turned into a version of this conversation.
Actually, it probably even predates that film. The first Wikipedia entry for the case in 2003 says
>Based on this summary, the case has become emblematic of frivolous and outrageous lawsuits for many people, and is often used as an example of the need for tort reform in the United States legal system. The summary, however, omits a large amount of relevant information.
> Ok, then I want to hear the reasoning behind those rulings/awards. ... > Edit: why disagree with this?
You're asking internet randos to explain something to you that is an easily researched matter of public record. I too used to think the McDonald's coffee case was a punchline for an overly litigious America. Then I read the horrifying details.
The part about bad corporate actors was not specific to the McDonalds example. I was merely saying that we could label any company as bad. For example, some might say abortion clinics are bad, while others might say gun makers are bad.
I would imagine the legal cases decided that McDonalds was not taking reasonable precautions to account for their much hotter than usual coffee. No amount of written warnings or even signed waivers will protect you from negligence, at least in most US states.
Also I don't know if you realize it but your comments are making you come across as a major <rude adjective of choice> which is likely why you're getting downvotes.
>> People did not realize how seriously they could be burned. All McDonald's restaurants served coffee between 180 and 190 degrees. At this temperature, spilled coffee causes third degree burns in less than three seconds. Other restaurants served coffee at 160 degrees, which takes twenty seconds to cause third degree burns. That is usually enough time to wipe away the coffee.
and https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/products-l...
>> As noted above, the jury found that McDonald's had sold a defective product and had also breached implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. A warranty is like a promise. An implied warranty is something that exists whether or not you have a piece of paper titled "Warranty". An implied warranty of merchantability means that the goods sold conform to the ordinary standards of care and that they are of average grade, quality and value as similar goods sold under similar circumstances. Put more simply, when you buy a cup of coffee at McDonald's, you have a right to expect that it will be pretty much the same as the coffee you could buy at any similar drive-thru. An implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose exists when the retailer, distributor, or manufacturer has reason to know the particular purpose for which the consumer goods are required, and that the buyer is relying on the skill and judgment of the seller to select and furnish suitable goods. In the case of coffee purchased at its drive-thru, McDonald's would know that the buyer of the coffee wanted to drink it and that the buyer is relying on McDonald's to sell coffee that the buyer can drink. When the McDonald's employee hands the customer the cup of coffee, it is as if McDonald's is saying, "I promise this coffee is drinkable and that the cup it is served in is suitable." If the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are breached, or the promise is broken, then the manufacturer, distributor, and/or seller of the product are liable or responsible for the consequences.
"She was hospitalized for eight days while undergoing skin grafting, followed by two years of medical treatment."
But the biggest issue that I don't see mentioned most times this case is brought up is that the coffee cups at that time were defective by design. They relied on the lid for structural integrity. When you grasped the cup and squeeze it hard enough to keep it from falling, then if the lid pops off the cup collapses and the cup falls, spilling scalding liquid on you. Notice that the current cups don't crush as easily even without a lid on, they still hold their structure when squeezing it hard enough to pick it up.
Also, the old cups would cause discomfort when holding them, which indicates that the liquid lost a lot of its thermal energy to the environment in a short amount of time. Due to that, customers that had to transport their coffee for some distance before wanting to drink it would want it to be served hotter than normal. Then it would be the perfect temperature when they get to their classroom / office. The newer cups have much better insulation properties, so this is less necessary.
1) The cup design is much, much sturdier. Not just at McDonald's, almost everywhere has sturdier cups.
2) The store usually puts cream and sugar in it rather than handing it to the customer to put it in themselves - that's what Stella was doing at the time she spilled.
3) cup holders are now plentiful and ubiquitous in cars - the car that Stella's grandson was driving didn't have cup holders so she had to grip the cup with her knees to open the cream/sugar.
https://online.vwu.edu/news/criminal-justice/culpability/
WHAT IS CULPABILITY?
Culpability “refers to the blameworthiness of the accused,” according to the definition provided by USLegal. When the court determines that the accused is culpable for a crime, the accused is considered to have an appropriate understanding that what the person did was wrong.
Being culpable implies that an action (or neglect of an action) is immoral, wrong or illegal. It does not, however, always imply malicious intent on the part of the wrongdoer. It simply means liable or blamable. A liable person is answerable for inappropriate actions.
For example, if you are driving on a busy street, lose focus and crash into another vehicle, then you are responsible for your action. Because you didn’t mean to cause harm, it’s called culpable negligence. It’s understood to have been unintentional, but you are still held accountable.
Strong disagree.
It comes to duty of care, and failing that duty is the culpable act. It has nothing to do with intent to cause harm, rather with the lack of intent to pay enough attention to avoid a collision. Otherwise fault is not found (e.g. a third car pushed them into the first)
We know why coffee vendors make the coffee so hot. It expresses more caffeine. It is very simple. They decided that the value in keeping consumers addicted was worth the risk.
>The severity of tap water scalds depends on the temperature of the water and the length of time the skin is exposed. Human exposure to hot water at 140°F can lead to a serious burn within 3 seconds, whereas at 120°F a serious burn takes about 10 minutes. Because thinner skin burns more quickly, children and older adults are at increased risk. Young children are disproportionately affected by scald burns, as approximately 21,000 children are treated for scald burns from all causes each year, and scald burns represent an estimated 65% of burn hospitalizations for children ages 4 and under. Hot tap water causes nearly 25% of all scald burns and is associated with more scald burn deaths and hospitalizations in children than any other hot liquid.
> "Normally you don't get 3rd degree burns..."
It was normal.
"Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000."
The coffee was turbo-hot--far in excess of standards that exist.
McDonald's had been warned about this before.
The design of the cup had it's own issues.
The woman's initial lawsuit was for perfectly reasonable medical expenses given the horrible nature of the injuries.
And, in response, McDonald's went completely nuclear.
So, when McDonald's lost, THAT'S why they got hammered.
And, even then, the award amount later got reduced, but nobody remembers that.
Edit: case in point - this comment is currently in negative and I literally have no idea why, I've been commenting on this site for almost 10 years and this is one topic that is always guaranteed to attract downvotes no matter the context.
There’s a lot of behaviour there that goes against the guidelines of most forums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
HN's rules around faux-politeness make it extremely susceptible to this kind of attack: not everyone is actually acting in good-faith and it makes discussions extremely tedious dealing with sealions who exploit that to drag the discussions of interest to a halt while the bad-faith user demands that we engage in a lengthy discussion of basic underlying points to keep from engaging the actual topic of discussion. Oh, but if you say it then you're the bad guy, because we have this rule!
Again, why are we re-litigating a discussion about mcdonald's coffee on a topic about workplace harassment? Literally the only connection is they're both lawsuits. There's been a ton of words written about something that is entirely off-topic, because of this sealioning from the parent. That is textbook, open-and-shut, exactly what this tactic is designed to do.
Not if people downvote rather than responding to nonproductive contributions. The problem isn't the rules around good faith when responding, the problem is people feeling obliged to respond.
One is not obligated to respond, something it took me an excessively long time to learn. The correct thing to do if you feel it is being done in bad faith -- or for any reason feel it's unproductive -- is stop replying.
The person who asked the question didn't even bring it up.
There is no harm done by answering a bad faith question in good faith. But there is harm done in treating a good faith question as bad faith.
Unless someone is repeatedly spamming a venue, this whole sealioning thing is just people caring too much about who "wins" on the internet.
That is the primary misconception which is exploited by the sealion tactic. It allows a bad-faith individual to reverse the position of offender and victim - because what harm is there in just asking a good-faith question?
Questions are still part of an argument, they are "leading" the reader. And addressing it carries the implication that it's a valid position worthy of respect and time to address it.
And some questions can be very noxious indeed and do need to be stifled outright - "what good has [minority group] ever done for us" is quite a harmful question even if the answer is legitimately "lots"! And again, even merely by bringing it up, and by addressing it in response, you've given it legitimacy both as a question around that particular group, and to the idea that groups need to justify their existence/presence in society. Those are both very harmful things done merely by "answering a bad-faith question in good faith".
Again, perhaps a more core value disagreement is that "good-faith discussion" can legitimately solve all woes, including malicious actors. That is really the basis of your "no harm can be done by answering a bad-faith question in good faith", is it not? That seems like magical thinking to me.
Anyway, "no harm can ever be caused by answering a bad-faith question with a good-faith response" is quite a broad position, perhaps you can cite some evidence or studies on that one, because there's rather trivial examples like hate speech that definitely run against it.
There absolutely can be.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/topi...
Edit: As pointed out below,not the same case, but a case of the same thing happening.
This is emotionally equivalent to your coworkers putting you in a room with a lion as your birthday celebration. I'm sure people won't believe me. Even if you don't, if someone ever tells you that they don't like being the center of attention, just take their word for it.
However, I think the near death experiences were worse because they would cause even more anxiety later. I still freak out near knives and hate when anyone comes up behind me. People touching my neck will send me off kicking and screaming.
As the Buddha said: "In life there will be suffering/stress/pain/dissatisfaction."
And then there are the panic attacks caused by thinking you may have another panic attack coming on.
But again, there's not enough in this article to really anlalyze. It's infotainment contrasting of the inanity of a birthday party with the firing/damages.
That the jury ruled in his favor is a significant detail.
[1] https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
When someone asks for something you should respect their wishes, and this company chose to ignore that and follow the protocol despite being asked not to. From that alone I know that this company is not somewhere good to work. Putting following the rules when you don't need to ahead of people's welfare is a huge red flag.
> As an employer who puts our employee safety first, we have a zero-tolerance policy and we stand by our decision to terminate the plaintiff for his violation of our workplace violence policy
Did the man really react violently? Or is Gravity Diagnostics not willing to admit that they handled the situation incorrectly?
Or, to put it another way: a "zero tolerance" policy should not be a "shoot first, ask questions never" policy.
He had a second panic attack the next day when he was confronted about it in a conference room. Rather than leave the conference room and go to the car like the previous day he self soothed by hugging himself (?) which apparently cased the other employees to think he was going to become violent. Not sure why... other than it was "weird" behavior? So they escorted him out of the building and wouldn't let him back in, which was apparently the policy.
>“They way [the Gravity Diagnostics employees] say it, they believed he was enraged and possibly about to get violent,” [his attorney] Bucher said.
>Berling has never demonstrated any violence, Bucher said, and someone who is suffering a panic attack becomes almost paralyzed with fear; they don’t often lash out.
>“Basically what the argument was is he was fired for having a panic attack,” Bucher said. “They made assumptions that he was dangerous based off of his disability and not off of any evidence that he was violent.”
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
Everything after that is because of this cause. "This guy physically attacked me after I chose, against warning, to put him in a panic state" is an admission of guilt not a deflection of blame in my mind. Pretty classic neuro-typical behavior tbh.
That doesn’t absolve them of an ADA complaint. A birthday party is not a required work event and this was preventable on their part.
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
Title is accurate.
Something that drives me absolutely nuts is that most people assume that anyone who wishes to avoid social interaction is actually really just too afraid to be social, and that forcing them to do so is an acceptable thing to do. It's not! It's incredibly callous and insensitive and it's something that should only ever be considered by extremely close friends. Please respect people's wishes when they say they don't want a party, especially if you are just coworkers!
Bear in mind that when a company goes bankrupt, usually it's not only the owners who feel pain. It's also employees, creditors, their suppliers, their customers, etc.
You're right that the lawyer will probably get a good chunk of it, though.
Because fuck proportionality and fuck every employee and shareholder of the company even if they had nothing to do with this?
Too bad the appeal process isn't a "double-or-nothing" type of deal. I'd love to see them take more of a financial hit from this.
I see no reason to disbelieve this; mistakes happen.
I do think the subsequent actions such as "reading him the riot act and accused him of stealing other coworkers’ joy" and firing him were completely bonkers and devoid of empathy though. It's weird that this escalated like this and didn't just end with an apology and "are you okay?"
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
It does sound like the violence accusation was a BS excuse, so the original anger is justified. But gathering all information before grabbing a pitchfork is a responsible thing to do.
The company wrongfully firing him for the resulting panic attack did.
I mean, doing the birthday party after the employee specifically asked not to for that exact reason is inexcusable to start with.
Whoever decided that should have been fired, not the employee.
> “My employees de-escalated the situation to get the plaintiff out of the building as quickly as possible while removing his access to the building, alerting me and sending out security reminders to ensure he could not access the building, which is exactly what they were supposed to do,” Brazil told Link NKY. “As an employer who puts our employee safety first, we have a zero-tolerance policy and we stand by our decision to terminate the plaintiff for his violation of our workplace violence policy.
It sounds like he may have done something physically violent to somebody. Of course it's terrible that they put him in that situation to begin with, but it does seem pretty plausible to me that if he became violent and injured a person (who may not have been his supervisor that ignored his request) that does sound like their reaction isn't nearly as unreasonable as it sounds when you omit all detail of violence.
It would be great to get some more details. For the record I'm not saying the firing was justified - I have no idea. Obviously a jury who does know decided it wasn't justified, and they have a lot more information than I/we do so they're probably right. All I'm saying is there may be some important information that we don't have that makes it a little less clear-cut evil.
> “At this point he starts employing other coping techniques that he’s worked on for years with his therapist,” Bucher said. “The way he described it is he started hugging himself and asked them to please stop.”
> Bucher said the two employees in the conference room asked Berling to stop, and when he didn’t, they walked out. Once the panic attack had subsided, Bucher said, Berling walked out of the conference room and was asked to leave the building. He was let go a couple of days later.
> “They way [the Gravity Diagnostics employees] say it, they believed he was enraged and possibly about to get violent,” Bucher said.
> Berling has never demonstrated any violence, Bucher said, and someone who is suffering a panic attack becomes almost paralyzed with fear; they don’t often lash out.
If the "violence" was him saying something mean/inappropriate or something (which I don't consider violence but many people do think speech can be violence) that would be largely irrelevant. But if he beat the shit out of somebody, that would make this case far less egregious and IMHO would make many of the reactionary comments here look terrible.
Like what? A judge and a jury investigated claims on both sides in adversarial court. Are you proposing that the defense of General Gravity was less than zealous?
Person says "don't do this thing, it will hurt me." Group says, "no it won't," or otherwise dismisses/forgets. Group does the thing. Person is injured, predictably, and takes protective/evasive actions. Group or subset of group becomes offended that person has taken protective/evasive actions, correctly believing actions to implicate the group's bad behavior. Group or subset of group smears their victim, amplifies or otherwise doubles-down on their initial misunderstanding or neglect of person's request not to injure them.
I feel like we're burying the lead by suggesting he got money because of an unwanted party. He was fired because of a medical disorder triggered by the party and was compensated for wrongful termination.
Here is the summary thread regarding it. It's worse than the article makes it out to be. The OP almost committed suicide due to the stress
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/topi...
Edit: I'm almost certain I was wrong. As pointed out elsewhere the dates don't line up. However it's a case of the exact same thing happening in a Legal Advice thread
Interesting thought exercises when it comes to interpretation of how law applies.
The lessons for the wider world will be found in the case details themselves, few of which are actually in this article.
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
1. Kevin Berling didn’t want Gravity Diagnostics, his former employer, to throw him a birthday party.
2. “The person who was responsible for the birthday parties who he talked to flat out forgot about his request. She didn’t do it to be mean. She said she would accommodate it and she just forgot.”
3. The party was thrown anyway, and Berling began to have a panic attack. He went to his car and worked through some breathing techniques. He then went back upstairs and finished his workday.
4. The following day Berling was called into a conference room to have a discussion about the party. According to Berling, she started reading him the riot act and accused him of stealing other coworkers’ joy.
5. He started to have another panic attack. At this point he starts employing other coping techniques that he’s worked on for years with his therapist. “The way he described it is he started hugging himself and asked them to please stop.”
6. The two employees in the conference room asked Berling to stop, and when he didn’t, they walked out. Once the panic attack had subsided, Berling walked out of the conference room and was asked to leave the building. He was let go a couple of days later.
On points 5 and 6:
Berling's attorney: "They way [the Gravity Diagnostics employees] say it, they believed he was enraged and possibly about to get violent. They made assumptions that he was dangerous based off of his disability and not off of any evidence that he was violent. If he had made violent gestures Gravity Diagnostics would have had grounds to fire him, but he didn’t do anything threatening."
Gravity Diagnostics COO: "My employees deescalated the situation to get the plaintiff out of the building as quickly as possible while removing his access to the building, alerting me and sending out security reminders to ensure he could not access the building, which is exactly what they were supposed to do."
Person has an anxiety disorder, so explicitly said not to have a party. His manager had a party anyway, triggering a panic attack. He ran away to his car to recover and they fired him.
Another aspect, I typically see injury lawsuits for things like cervical injuries with fusions settle for like $150k so in that regard, $450k seems like he made out pretty well. Fatalities depend on age, but even then we are only talking about a few million for a young person.
What the actual hell? Who is this alien impostor? Calling sus on Julie Brazil.
My birthday is mine, you don't get to use it just because I have to give it to you for tax reasons. I don't want you cake pops. I want to do work. This has lead to making things worse and I've had segments of people in companies target me for my unwillingness to mess with that stuff.
I have left jobs over things that read like this. I never thought about suing. It would just be such a huge pain and I'd already be looking for a new job. If I end up in a space where this happens again, I'll have my attorney draft a strongly worded letter or maybe add some lines to my employee agreement saying that they don't own my likeness so I'm not going to appear in promotional materials, you can't tell anyone my birthday, and I don't want any weird awards or whatever. They'll sign it... forget... and then when I have to quit it'll make the lawsuit easier.
Without knowing what he said, it’s hard to judge. Since the jury found for plaintiff, I’m going to guess they didn’t see it as a credible threat.
This is just sad.
Original article:
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
The headline sounds ridiculous, but this detail explains everything. Getting fired because you had a panic attack in response to an optional thing you explicitly told them not to do? That's lunacy.
What a bizarre and totally avoidable situation.
The quote about the employees acting appropriately for office safety sounds like this second event was interpreted as violence of some sort. We weren't there so we can't know, but it's one of those things where the overall picture makes the jury decision seem likely to be reasonable.
So they have been able to confirm they have a working layer of security theater, on top of forcing employees to receive office birthday parties? That's weird. And then they dive behind seemingly irrelevant procedural cover like that when an employee is forced to walk out in embarrassment, due to a health condition? That's creepy.
That sounds like better security than most companies where they have a hard time just removing an employee's access, and even if they do, they have no established process to tell employees that he shouldn't be allowed in.
I left my badge at home once, I was wearing my company logo jacket and tailgated in behind a couple employees I didn't know, one even held the door open for me. If I'd been terminated and banned from the office, I'd have had no trouble getting back into the office.
We've instituted a "no-tailgating" policy since then, but there's no enforcement and is widely ignored.
It's not theatre but it sure sounds theatrical, when they could have apologised, given him some time to regroup his emotions and then left it at that.
When I was much younger I had a nervous breakdown at work during a period of extreme personal stress -- I really absolutely and totally lost the plot. Quite probably upset a lot of people, many of whom did not see me the same afterwards. Though more fallout for me personally; it was difficult to be there and my reaction undermined me.
I was treated with enormous -- and I must say on reflection completely unearned -- respect and at no point did the company feel they had to do this. Because I'm not in the USA.
It's worth considering that many places in the USA seem to think the problem in their culture with violent crime is not guns but the fact that mentally ill people can get guns and weaponry of all sorts.
What follows from that is company policy that seriously upset people must necessarily be treated as a threat.
And this sort of "bar him from the building because he panicked" outcome is the logical conclusion of this attitude.
So during security audits you can now tick the box that access to the premises is secure, while in reality anyone can just follow random people in. Now carry a box that requires two hands, wear a lanyard with a card hinting at being some kind of courier, and not a soul will stop you unless the building has actual security.
It’s a sad situation, and he probably deserves his award, but I think if an employee has some sort of anti-social mental episode on the job, you have a responsibility to your employees to keep them out until they are cleared by a doctor.
As such, your employer should obviously revoke you access to their facilities until you are cleared by a doctor.
Are you implying that anyone with anxiety disorders is a potential mass shooter?
To be fair, an employee having a panic attack because one your managers did something they were informed in advance would cause a panic attack is textbook disgruntled.
Imagine if a company forced a recovering alcoholic to go to a bar and then firing him when he got drunk.
edit: the comment above is not the one I originally replied to; it has been edited. It did not originally say "textbook disgruntled," it said "not someone you'd want to have keys to your kingdom," which I assumed to mean they were right to fire him.
Edited to clarify. "Not someone you want to have keys to your kingdom" as in temporarily removing access credentials. Not firing.
> Imagine if a company forced a recovering alcoholic to go to a bar and then firing him when he got drunk
This would be ludicrous. Temporarily revoking his access to prod would not be.
More accurately, if the employee got upset they dragged him to a bar and left, and then they fired him over that. Even more absurd, and yet closer to what happened here...
Edit: after OPs ninja edit, I'm not so sure anymore
I’ll trade a panic attack for $450k any day.
PS: I'm just justifying the 450k reward as being fired for no reason (his reaction). It's understandable
His employer refused to make reasonable accommodations for his disability, which in this case was no action at all. Further, they did the exact opposite of what he'd asked for in advance.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/ac...
> Berling has an anxiety disorder, said his attorney, Tony Bucher, and his birthday is a source of stress, so his client went to the person at the company who throws the parties and asked them not to.
> “The person who was responsible for the birthday parties who he talked to flat out forgot about his request,” Bucher said. “She didn’t do it to be mean. She said she would accommodate it and she just forgot.”
https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...
I'd guess that that forgetting that a request was made does not mean a request wasn't made, and doesn't remove the employer's requirement to comply with the ADA. It's also unclear to me that the "informal" part of "informal request" means anything here - a request is a request, and it was made to the person in charge of birthday parties.
Regardless of if she threw the party to be mean or not (given the outcome, I don't think that's relevant) - the root problem may have come down to the company's reaction to his panic attack. They fired him for his disability. That's a clear violation of the ADA.
One might say it's not necessary to the job, but is this true? Social events and employee camaraderie are arguably necessary to a well functioning workplace. I'm not even arguing that parties are necessary but that a company can decide for themselves if they are no? And that if someone is so uncomfortable taking part then perhaps they don't belong at the company.
Why is it a legitimate expectation that a company and its employees must accommodate your problems to such a degree?
Not throwing someone a birthday party sounds like a perfectly reasonable accommodation.
Beyond that, people have to push back at those annoying requirements. Should a company be allowed to have whatever requirements it wants to have? Should I? Do we belong to them?
> When the company threw him a lunchtime party against his wishes, it triggered a panic attack and he left abruptly to spend his break in his car. Four days later, after his office managers confronted him about his reaction to the party, he was fired from the Northern Kentucky company
Julie Brazil, the founder and [COO] said ...
> My employees de-escalated the situation to get the plaintiff out of the building as quickly as possible while removing his access to the building, alerting me and sending out security reminders to ensure he could not access the building, which is exactly what they were supposed to do, we have a zero-tolerance policy and we stand by our decision to terminate the plaintiff for his violation of our workplace violence policy.
The plantiff's lawyer said ...
> I believe (he) was so happy and relieved that the jury recognized that he was not some violent and menacing person and that it was not okay for Gravity Diagnostics to just assume that he was without any evidence to support those misconceptions.
So the case seems less about
> @manager please can we not have a birthday party for me please
and more about the
> @employee you're fired for being violent even though we do not have evidence to back this statement up
...
Whole article smells to me like the company blaming the employee for something he warned them about anyway, but that's just my opinion.
It's explicitely not ok for 'social fit' to be a firing offence, isn't it? That's another word for "Not our kind of person" which opens an ugly door.
Parties targeting one person are so, so problematic. Nobody asked anybody to 'accomodate' this person. They asked to be left alone, which is literally zero accomodation.
Most employment is at will. That permits firing someone for not being a good fit. (You can't define "fit" however you feel. But someone not getting along with their colleagues and not responding to feedback would generally be fireable for it.)