A Kentucky man received $450,000 in damages from his former employer Gravity Diagnostics, after being fired for having a panic attack at an unwanted birthday party.
According to court documents, the man says he specifically told his employer just days before that he did not want to celebrate his birthday. He says he explained to his office manager that a birthday party would trigger his anxiety disorder. Despite that, on August 7th, 2019, a birthday celebration was held, and the plaintiff had a panic attack.
The plaintiff says that he was then escorted outside, and he finished his break in his car. He has an anxiety disorder that can spur “panic attacks in stressful situations,” according to court documents. He said he asked the office manager at Gravity Diagnostics via text why the party was organized despite his concerns and was called into a meeting the next day.
In the meeting he was “confronted and criticized” by the office manager, which caused another panic attack, according to the suit.
He was then sent home for multiple days and fired that weekend “because of the events of the previous week,” the documents state. Because of that, the plaintiff sued for disability discrimination and retaliation, citing he was forced “to suffer from a loss of income and benefits and emotional distress and mental anxiety,”
The plaintiff was awarded the win, and the jury determined Gravity Diagnostics had violated Kentucky law.
Julie Brazil, the founder and chief operating officer of Gravity Diagnostics, released a statement saying her employees were the true victims. “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.”
