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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reached a $95,000 settlement of a disability discrimination lawsuit with catalog retailer Miles Kimball Co., but a company official says the firm settled only because it was less expensive than litigating the case.
While working in the Oshkosh, Wis.-based firm’s information technology department in 2007, deaf employee Laura Nejedlo was assigned to use a new software program for the company’s computer system, the EEOC said.
But she was denied her requested accommodation of a sign language interpreter for training and could not fully utilize the new program. Ms. Nejedlo was fired in February 2008 after 13 years of successful employment, the EEOC said.
"The recent (Americans with Disabilities Act) amendments have re-focused attention on providing reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities,” John C. Hendrickson, regional attorney with the EEOC’s Chicago district office, said Wednesday in a statement. "Sometimes we need to reinforce, through litigation, the message that disabled individuals are productive workers if they are given an equal chance to compete in the workplace. We appreciate Miles Kimball's willingness to provide relief for Ms. Nejedlo and to ensure that discrimination does not recur."
However, Margie Harvey, human resources vice president at Miles Kimball, said Ms. Nejedlo was offered an interpreter, but she refused.
“She said they could not interpret” the technical material, Ms. Harvey said.
Ms. Nejedlo was terminated “because she couldn’t learn the new software,” Ms. Harvey said. In addition to refusing an interpreter, “she also wasn’t even attending some of the training that we had for her and doing the homework.”
Ms. Harvey said the company settled the case “because it would have cost us more to go through the entire legal proceedings than it would have to settle it. It was a financial decision.”