Epileptic Driver Wins Hiring-Bias Lawsuit

In one of the largest verdicts of its kind, a federal jury in Detroit awarded $5.5 million in damages Monday to a former truck driver who was denied a job because he suffers from epilepsy.

Lawyers said they expect the award to be reduced to just under $500,000 because of a cap on compensatory and punitive damages under federal civil rights law.

Still, attorneys for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who brought the case, said they expect the decision to send a strong message to employers about their obligations under the closely watched Americans With Disabilities Act, which took effect in 1992.

The plaintiff, Thomas M. Lewis of Flint, Mich., lost a job transporting new cars from auto plants to dealers for a company now known as Commercial Carriers after suffering his first epileptic seizure in 1989. Lewis, now 45, had held the job for 13 years.

However, the damages won by Lewis stemmed from a second incident at the company. In 1993, Commercial Carriers refused to hire him back for a new, less hazardous job that became available as a driver loading new autos onto rail cars.

The company contended that Lewis, because of his epilepsy, would pose a safety hazard both to himself and co-workers, and it gave the job to a worker with less seniority. The EEOC successfully argued that Lewis was fit for the work and that Commercial Carriers, under its union contract, was thus obligated to rehire him.

Adele Rapport, the regional attorney for the EEOC in Detroit, said the jury’s decision demonstrates that employers should not make “blanket exclusions” keeping disabled workers from certain jobs judged to be dangerous. “You have to make an individualized assessment in every case,” she said.

But Fred Batten, a lawyer for Commercial Carriers, said the jury’s decision puts the company in “an impossible predicament.”

He said the company decided against giving Lewis a new driving job to fulfill its obligation to provide a safe workplace. He said if Lewis was hired back and “killed somebody, who would have defended that?”

Batten said Commercial Carriers, a division of Miami-based Ryder System, will appeal the decision.

The $5.5-million award includes $191,931 in back pay and pension benefits, $959,655 in compensatory damages covering such issues as pain and suffering, and more than $4.3 million in punitive damages. Commercial Carriers must also rehire Lewis.

Civil rights law normally limits compensatory and punitive damages to $300,000, and Batten predicted the judge will reduce those damages to that amount.