A Kentucky employee was awarded $450,000 by a jury last month for lost wages and emotional distress after he was fired days after suffering from a panic attack over a surprise birthday party at his workplace.
The individual, identified as Kevin Berling, was a staff member at a medical laboratory, the Gravity Diagnostics in Covington, Kentucky for about 10 months when he talked with his office manager, asking not to be thrown a birthday party because he had an anxiety disorder.
Unwanted Birthday Party
The victim's lawyer, Tony Bucher, said that the surprise birthday party was planned by other employees at the workplace while the office manager was away. He said that the situation quickly spiraled out of control.
When Berling learned about the planned lunchtime celebration for his birthday, which was supposed to include birthday wishes from colleagues as well as a banner decoration, he had a panic attack. He decided to instead celebrate his birthday inside his car and eat his lunch meal during break time, as per The Seattle Times.
The planned birthday party resulted in the deterioration of his relationship with his coworkers due to him maintaining distance. The following day, Berlin was called in for a meeting where his superiors "criticized" him for how he handled the party, causing him to have another panic attack.
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Bucher said that at that point, his client started to employ other coping techniques that he has been working on for several years with his therapist. Berling explained that he started hugging himself and asked his superiors to stop.
According to Fox Business, the worker's superiors then sent him home for the remainder of the week and sent him a letter the following Monday. The document revealed that he was being informed that he had been fired from his position with the company. Berling then sued his workplace for disability discrimination and retaliation.
$450,000 Compensation
Berling's supervisors said that they confronted him about his "somber behavior" following the surprise birthday party. But in a court filing, the company said that the firing of the worker was because he became "violent" in the meeting and scared the supervisors who told security not to let the employee return.
The jury in charge of the trial that lasted two days reached a verdict on Mar. 31 that concluded Berling had experienced an adverse employment action because of disability. They awarded him $150,000 in lost wages and benefits and another $300,000 for suffering, embarrassment, and loss of self-esteem.
However, the judge in charge of the case has not yet entered a judgment regarding the verdict of the jury. On Saturday, a lawyer for Gravity Diagnostics, John Maley, said that the company would file post-trial motions that would challenge the verdict on legal grounds. It would assert that one juror had violated court orders about obtaining information outside the trial.
Furthermore, Maley said that the case of Berling did not meet the standard for a disability claim because did not disclose his condition to the company and that he had not met the legal threshold to qualify as having a disability, the New York Times reported.
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