CHARLESTON – A former Walmart employee says he was wrongfully discharged because of disability.
Richard Neal filed his complaint in Kanawha Circuit Court against Wal-Mart Stores East LP and Melissa Canterbury, who was Neal’s supervisor.
Neal says he was born with eye conditions and had cataract surgeries when he was young. He says his vision is severely impaired. He says he has been diagnosed with glaucoma, presbyopia, hypermetropia, aphakia and astigmatism resulting in blurred vision, low vision and difficulty focusing on close objects. He says he also suffers from anxiety and achalasia, which affect swallowing.
According to the complaint, Neal was hired by Walmart in 1999 as a stocker. In 2002, he moved to the bakery where he packaged bread, baked bread, helped customers and performed other duties. In 2015, he was give the primary assignment of making donuts.
In 2019, his issues with achalasia became worse. He took medical leave in February 2020 for surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, and he was off for about three months.
When he returned to work, he was moved from the bakery to the deli.
“Walmart’s employees and supervisors acted as though they were upset with plaintiff after he came back from his medical leave,” the complaint states. “Plaintiff was assigned to make sandwiches, cut meat, load and unload freight and help customers. Plaintiff had difficulty with some of the new tasks due to his vision impairment.”
Canterbury was Neal’s deli supervisor. Two days after he came back to work, Neal says he was having trouble reading the orders and instructions for sandwiches. He says Canterbury told him “to work faster,” and she told him there was no way to change the print for the orders and did not offer any accommodations.
He says he was written up, but he says he didn’t’ receive copies of those reprimands. He also says he asked to return to the donut job, but he was told another worker had that position.
When that person called off, Neal says he would help in the bakery. Then, he says Walmart hired a new employee to assist the new donut maker. He says he wasn’t given the opportunity to apply for his old job, and he says neither of the donut makers are disabled.
In December 2020, he says he missed several weeks of work because of a COVID-19 infection. Following store policy, he says he also missed time when he had COVID-19 symptoms.
In 2021, Neal says he was assigned to more cooking duties in the deli. That included cooking chicken tenders in a fryer. He says he had trouble seeing the screen on the meat thermometer. Again, he says Canterbury offered no accommodations. He later was written up for not recording temperatures of the meat.
Neal says he thinks he was being set up for failure by the defendants who “assigned him to more difficult jobs and tasks that he had difficulty with due to his disabilities, rather than tasks that he could perform without accommodations.”
He was fired on October 8, 2021, for not properly testing the temperature of food.
“Plaintiff believes that the reasons given for his discharge are pretextual and that he was fired on the basis of his disability,” the complaint states. “Plaintiff further believes that defendants failed to provide reasonable accommodations as required by state law to assist him to perform his job functions.”
Neal says he has suffered lost wages and benefits, out-of-pocket losses, emotional and mental distress, humiliation, anxiety, embarrassment, depression, aggravation, annoyance and inconvenience.
He accuses the defendants of disability discrimination in violation of the West Virginia Human Rights Act, and violating public policy as well as aiding and abetting,
Neal seeks compensatory and punitive damages, court costs, attorney fees, pre- and post-judgment interests and other relief. He also seeks a declaratory judgment declaring the defendants’ acts to be in violation of state law and a permanent injunction order the defendants to cease and desist from engaging in such conduct and to establish ongoing training on the subject of unlawful employment discrimination.
In their answer, the defendants deny the allegations and seek to have the case dismissed.
He is being represented by Kristine Thomas Whiteaker of The Grubb Law Group in Charleston. The defendants are represented by Eric Iskra and Sarah Kowalkowski of Spilman Thomas & Battle in Charleston. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Kenneth Ballard.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 22-C-726
