B&B Partner Michaela May spoke to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly recently on an appellate decision permitting an oil technician’s disability discrimination claim to proceed to trial. In Sutherland v. Peterson’s Oil Service, the technician regularly updated his employer about his knee injury and was terminated very soon after notifying his employer that he was able to return to work.
May told Lawyers Weekly that the pandemic did not grant employees “carte blanche” to discriminate. “Even assuming that an employer had a legitimate business reason to reduce its workforce, as many did during COVID, they can’t consider disability or any other protected class or conduct in deciding whom to eliminate,” she said. “In other words, even a national emergency isn’t a license to discriminate.”
In Sutherland, the U.S. Circuit Court for the First Circuit reversed an order from the lower, federal court granting summary judgment for the employer. This means that, rather than the case being dismissed, the employee’s disability-discrimination claim will move forward toward trial.
As May remarked, there are no “magic words” for telling an employer that you have a disability or that you need an accommodation.
“Here, the employee told the employer in significant detail about how his knee injury for which he needed surgery affected him,” May said. “The employee also told the employer what he needed — reduced hours and time off — and that is all that he needed to say to trigger the interactive process either under the ADA or [Massachusetts law] Chapter 151B.”
