Posted on 06/07/2005 10:34:11 AM PDT by wmichgrad
A jury has awarded $284,000 to a Bad Axe man who claims he was fired from his job for being fat.
The eight-person jury in U.S. District Court awarded Steve Pasanski the money in a wrongful discharge discrimination case against Continental Rental, Inc. The four-day trial concluded Friday in the Bay City courtroom of U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson.
"I'm grateful to the jury, and I'm glad the legal process vindicated Steve Pasanski," said Glen Lenhoff, the Flint attorney who represented the plaintiff. "I hope overweight people are encouraged by this."
Pasanski, since being fired in August 2003, underwent gastric-bypass surgery and has since slimmed down to 210 pounds, Lenhoff said. Citing the possibility that Continental Rental would appeal, Lenhoff advised Pasanski to make no public comment about the jury award.
Jamie Nisidis, the attorney who represented Continental Rental, could not be reached by The Times for comment.
Lenhoff said Pasanski fluctuated between 355 and 367 pounds during his entire course of employment at the Bad Axe rental store.
"He was vastly overweight the whole time he worked there," Lenhoff said. "But he was promoted to manager, and in fact was named manager of the year for the whole chain in 2002."
In 2003, Lenhoff said, anonymous callers phoned the Bay City office of the company and reported that Pasanski was spotted sleeping on the job.
"We contend that he wasn't sleeping, and even if he was, it was for a few minutes on his break," Lenhoff said. "They (Continental Rental) linked the sleeping to his weight."
Lenhoff introduced several glowing performance evaluations into evidence, as well as a document from when the company laid Pasanski off in May 2003.
"They criticized him for sweating too much," Lenhoff said. "The owner said, 'Steve, you weigh twice as much as me."'
At the time of the layoff, Pasanski was told not to return to work without a clean bill of health, Lenhoff said
So Pasanski went to his doctor and underwent a battery of tests - all of which came back in the healthy range, according to Lenhoff, and returned to work.
In June, while Pasanski was on vacation, Continental received more complaints about Pasanski, Lenhoff said - complaints that he said are common in the world of rental merchandise.
Lenhoff said that Pasanski's obesity, rather than his performance, was the real reason Continental Rental discharged him on Aug. 7.
"We argued that his weight surely was a factor," Lenhoff said. "Even his discharge document comments on his overall laziness and gave him two weeks to correct his health problems."
Pasanski was so upset by the firing that he underwent the surgery, which makes a patient's stomach smaller, preventing the person from consuming more than a small amount calories at a time.
"There's a lot of discrimination against overweight people," Lenhoff said. "He was so devastated by this discharge that he decided he had to get the fat off his body any way possible. This is dangerous surgery."
Pasanski now delivers recreational vehicles across the country and in Canada, a job that keeps him from his wife and his home for about 25 days a month.
speaking of gastric surgery, know what the one thing they should be telling patients, to save up for your next set of operations unless you like the sharpei look
the problem with the gastric bypass is you lose a hundred or more pounds in a short space of time which means even if you exercise, and I suspect few are pumping iron in the gym until they lose those initial pounds, you are going to end up with mounds of loose hanging skin that can weight about 20 - 30 pounds alone
I would do what is best for my company as a whole also.
Surgery will only fix his weight, it won't make him eat right (just smaller portions now) and it won't make him exercise. He is still going to be a lazy glob of celulite.
LOL
man i'm glad I live in an "at will" state that allows me to fire anyone for any reason.
Your ugly ! and your fired !
hehe
He should have thought about suing everybody for discrimination just to get enough money to feed and house him.
Does the skin go away eventually or do the patient need to have them removed surgically?
Another thread with the "experts" weighing in on gastric bypass surgery.
uhm... MI IS an at will state. the problem seems to come from giving a reason. if you give no reason, you're fine. if you give a reason, you can be sued. unless you fire someone for being homosexual.. that's ok.
Sorry, but any employer ought to be able to fire any employee for any (or no) reason at any time. Freedom would alow that, socialism wouldn't.
...allow...
smarm...
...just like most of the people who came into his store. But at 210 pounds, he'll look just like them, and they won't complain.
...just like most of the people who came into his store. But at 210 pounds, he'll look just like them, and they won't complain.
Thankfully, a happy ending.
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