PHILADELPHIA - A former employee of a Montgomery County tree company is suing her ex-employer over claims she was unlawfully fired because of her request to work the morning shift instead of the afternoon shift, following a medically-necessary hysterectomy and subsequent gynecological surgery.
Jennifer Vogt filed a lawsuit Aug. 17 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the Asplundh Tree Expert Company citing unlawful discrimination in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Pennsylvania Humans Relations Act.
Following surgery, Vogt’s doctor restricted her duties as an administrative assistant for the Asplundh Tree Expert Company’s Risk Management Department to just four hours, the suit says.
On Sept. 9, 2014, she told the company’s Human Resources Supervisor that she would turn to work in a couple of days, the suit says.
But instead of working her afternoon shift she held since being employed in October 2013, she requested to work the morning shift because it was in the evenings when she suffered from the peak of her pain related to her disability, the suit says.
Vogt requested on at least two occasions a reasonable accommodation for her disability, the claim states, and was denied several times, with her employer saying her absence from the afternoon shift would be considered a resignation.
She is seeking back-pay, front-pay, compensatory damages for past and future emotional upset, mental anguish, humiliation, loss of life’s pleasures as well as punitive damages, together with reasonable attorneys’ fees.
Vogt is being represented by Philadelphia-based attorneys Stephen G. Console and M. Susan Toth of Console Law Offices LLC.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case number 2:15-cv-04667-LFR.