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Fired vending machine company employee can seek redress

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vending machine

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled a vending machine company worker who injured his knee, was cleared by doctors to return to work but fired over accommodations can seek redress from his employer over alleged discrimination and other issues.

Atish Narayan was working as a cashier at Woburn, Massachusetts-based Canteen Vending Services Inc. in 2015 when he hit his knee on the corner of a desk, causing an injury that required surgery. Prior to being cleared to work in 2016 following knee surgery, management allegedly circulated e-mails regarding his injury that said “they took Atish off for another 45 days — for a bumped knee,” according to documents in Atish Narayan v. Compass Group USA Inc., filed in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California in Sacramento.

In late 2016, after he had returned to work, a medical examiner hired by the insurer to assist with his workers comp claim wrote that “Mr. Narayan has returned to his usual and customary occupation. That being said, he is unable to kneel, squat, or run." The medical report was “silent” as to any work restrictions, and the doctor testified at a deposition that he “never identified any such restrictions,” documents state.

Documents further state “(t)here is no evidence that he did not perform all duties attendant to his position between returning to work post-surgery and the time of his termination. In fact, his treating doctors regularly sent Defendant progress reports confirming his ability to work without impairment.”

The doctor who performed his surgery reiterated Mr. Narayan’s ability to return to work without restriction in a report issued in 2017. However, “once Defendant's management received the (medical examiner’s) report, they decided over the course of just a couple of conference calls that they could not accommodate the disability allegedly evinced by the (medical examiner),” who had noted Mr. Narayan’s limited movement, documents state.

Mr. Narayan contacted the company’s human resources representative “telling her he could do his work,” but the representative “refused to change the company’s position,” documents state.

Mr. Narayan proceeded to seek redress in federal court for alleged disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, failure to engage in an interactive process, retaliation under both the Fair Employment and Housing Act and the California Family Rights Act, failure to prevent discrimination, and wrongful termination in violation of public policy.

Canteen Vending Services’ parent company, Compass Group USA Inc., moved for summary judgment on the grounds of “the absence of a genuine issue of material fact.” In denying that motion Tuesday, a federal judge wrote in his ruling that facts presented in the case against the employer supported Mr. Narayan’s claims on all counts.

On the discrimination charges the judge wrote that the “Plaintiff has pointed to ample evidence suggesting that Defendant failed to take steps necessary to prevent Plaintiff's allegedly retaliatory and discriminatory termination. Defendant failed to investigate and/or clarify the apparent contradiction in (the examining doctor’s report), let alone how his apparent opinion meshed with the fact that Plaintiff's own treating doctors had released him to return to work with no restrictions and Plaintiff had actually been performing his job without incident for some six months.”