A federal jury will have to decide next month whether Crain Automotive Holdings, which operates in 18 locations across Arkansas, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by firing an employee after she was hospitalized for chest pains stemming from a panic attack.
That's what U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes said Friday in denying Crain's request that he dismiss a 2017 lawsuit filed on the woman's behalf by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The EEOC alleged, in filing the lawsuit in September 2017, that the business fired accounts payable clerk Judith Vaughan of Searcy because she suffered from severe panic attacks.
The lawsuit said Vaughn, who worked at Crain's corporate office in Sherwood, went to a hospital emergency room after work on Jan. 30, 2017, because she was experiencing chest pains and feared she was having a heart attack. It says she was released the next day and told her supervisor she would call her after a doctor's appointment scheduled for Feb. 2.
During that doctor's appointment, Vaughan's supervisor called her, according to the suit. It says Vaughan later called her supervisor back and said she planned to report to work the next day.
On Feb. 3, Vaughan reported to work, but she experienced another panic attack. After notifying her supervisor by email, she left work to go to the doctor, according to the lawsuit.
It says that even though she provided a letter from her doctor urging the business to excuse her from work until Feb. 27, the business denied her request for a disability accommodation and fired her. Vaughan said two supervisors told her that "it was not working out" because of her health problems.
The EEOC, which enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, is seeking back pay, compensatory and punitive damages, compensation for lost benefits and an injunction prohibiting future discrimination.
In Holmes' ruling Friday denying Crain's motion for summary judgment, he said Crain disputes that Vaughan is disabled under the act, which applies the term to anyone who has "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities."
He said it is undisputed that Vaughan has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and panic attacks, which she says make her feel paralyzed and cause chest pain and difficulty breathing, thinking and communicating with others. He noted that the disability law specifically includes thinking, breathing and communicating as "major life activities."
"Whether an individual's impairment 'substantially limits' the identified 'major life activity' is a question of fact for the jury," Holmes said.
He said Crain has noted that Vaughan can perform other demanding activities, such as handling her parents' estates, and doesn't have panic attacks constantly. "But," he said, "these facts, even if true, do not mean that Vaughan is not disabled under the EEOC laws."
In light of her testimony about the difficulties her impairments cause her, and Congress' intent to broaden the definition of what constitutes a disability, "a reasonable jury could find that Vaughan is disabled within the meaning of the ADA," he said.
Crain also argued that even if Vaughan is disabled, she couldn't have been fired because of it, as Crain didn't know about it. But the symptoms Vaughan described to her supervisors, and her doctor's note, could lead a reasonable jury to infer that Crain knew about Vaughan's anxiety, depression and panic attacks at the time of her firing, Holmes said. He added that a jury could also find that Crain knew the extent of some of Vaughan's impairments, "as they had caused her chest pain resulting in a heart catheterization as well as missing several days of work."
The trial in Holmes' court is to begin the week of May 6. It is expected to last about three days.
Metro on 04/17/2019