BALTIMORE-
The federal government sued Denny’s restaurants Thursday, alleging that a manager who had a leg amputated was wrongly fired because her superiors believed she posed a safety risk.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the class-action lawsuit accusing Denny’s of discriminating against Paula Hart and other unnamed employees.
Hart, a manager at the Denny’s in the Baltimore suburb of Fullerton, had a leg amputated in December 2002. She returned to work in April 2003, using a walker while recuperating from surgery and awaiting a prosthetic leg, the commission said.
Hart worked for a short time, then was told she posed a safety risk. She was fired after using up 26 weeks of medical leave provided by the company, said Ron Phillips, an EEOC lawyer.
The commission said Hart was not a safety risk, except to herself if she suffered a fall. Even if she was a safety risk, “there were very obvious reasonable accommodations under the law that would alleviate that risk,” Phillips said.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring Denny’s Inc.–a subsidiary of Spartanburg, S.C.-based Denny’s Corp.–to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act by giving additional medical leave to eligible employees. It also seeks lost wages and benefits, and other damages.
Denny’s issued a statement Thursday saying the lawsuit was “based on unfounded accusations of disability discrimination stemming from the individual instance of one former employee.”
The statement said Hart did not indicate she “would be able to perform the essential functions of her job in a finite or reasonable amount of time.”
The statement continues: “Given the physical demands of working in our restaurants, including extensive moving about all parts of the operation with only intermittent breaks … Denny’s was unable to provide an accommodation that would have allowed her to continue working in her position.”
The statement also denied that Denny’s discriminates against people with disabilities or denies them the opportunity to work.
Denny’s has nearly 1,600 restaurants in the United States and several foreign countries, with annual sales exceeding $2 billion.
The restaurant chain has faced several discrimination lawsuits in the past. It settled a 1994 lawsuit for $54.4 million that accused the chain of asking black customers to prepay for meals. Since then, it has faced several more cases filed by blacks and Hispanics. A lawsuit alleging discrimination against men of Middle Eastern descent was filed last year.
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