The owner of a Lone Tree electrotherapy device manufacturer allegedly remarked that he was going to fire one of his employees and that she would be “the last of her kind.”
Ronette Perkins’ alleged terminable offense: she is black.
Denver attorney Sara Green filed a civil discrimination lawsuit on Perkins’ behalf Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Denver against Zynex Medical Inc., 9990 Park Meadows Drive.
Zynex officials including owner Thomas Sandgaard could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The Colorado Civil Rights Division of the issued a “notice of right to sue” on Nov. 3, the lawsuit says.
Zynex, with offices in Denver and Denmark, markets electrotherapy devices for “patients suffering from impaired mobility due to stroke, spinal cord injury or debilitating and chronic pain,” according to the company’s website.
The lawsuit is seeking back pay, attorney’s fees, future lost wages, benefits and punitive damages against the company with worldwide sales. Perkins suffered “personal humiliation, severe emotional pain, inconvenience, mental anguish, future pecuniary loss and loss of enjoyment of life,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says that Perkins was hired on Oct. 7, 2013 and that in the company’s customer service department, the lawsuit says. Only a handful of Zynex’s 125 employees were black, it says. The lawsuit also says that only one of her five supervisors was black and that he also was laid off.
The lawsuit says that on Aug. 10, 2015, Zynex CEO Sandgaard told other employees that he was firing Perkins and that she would be “the last of her kind,” the lawsuit said.
On Aug. 14, Tammy Walsh, Zynex’s human resources supervisor, notified Perkins without prior warning that she was being laid off, the lawsuit says. Up to that point Perkins had never been written up or verbally counseled because of her work, the lawsuit says.
About a month later on Sept. 10, a former co-worker called Perkins and told her about the alleged “last of her kind” comment by Sandgaard, the lawsuit says. When Perkins asked the former co-worker what that meant, the person said he was referring to her race, the lawsuit says.
“(Zynex) willfully and intentionally subjected Perkins to race discrimination,” the lawsuit says.
