Lawsuit: Nursing home with 20 COVID deaths fired janitor for not working while infected
A Louisville nursing home fired a $9.97-an-hour janitor in May for refusing to work inside the facility while she had COVID-19, according to a lawsuit.
Kathy Kramer, 64, is suing Essex Nursing and Rehabilitation Center for wrongful termination in a case that moved to U.S. District Court last week at the defendant’s request.
Kramer wanted to home-quarantine for 10 days as the Kentucky Department of Public Health instructed to protect others at the nursing home, said her attorney, Andrew Epstein.
“This lady really cared about the residents she worked with,” Epstein said. “This was a pretty low-level worker who was trying to do the right thing and follow all of the rules, and she was very unfairly punished for it.”
Essex administrator Robert Flatt referred a call seeking comment about the suit on Tuesday to corporate owner Principle Long Term Care Inc. of Kinston, N.C., which did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment. In its written response to the lawsuit, Essex denies Kramer’s allegations.
COVID-19 has hit Essex harder than most other nursing homes in Kentucky, according to a Herald-Leader analysis of state data. So far, 20 residents have died at Essex, with a total of 68 residents and 37 employees infected with the novel coronavirus since March.
Essex had all residents and staff tested for COVID-19 in May as the pandemic worsened.
According to her suit, Kramer’s test result came back positive on May 16. She called Flatt and told him that, to avoid spreading the virus, she would stay in quarantine at home for the next 10 days. However, Flatt told her to return to duty. Essex had established a separate unit for COVID-positive residents where Kramer safely could work, since she already was infected with the virus, he said.
There were serious problems with that plan, Epstein said Tuesday.
“It’s not like ‘Star Trek,’ where she just beams from her house directly into the COVID wing,” Epstein said. For Kramer to get to work, she would have to walk through common areas, touch doors and use bathrooms that accidentally could spread the virus to other people, he said.
Also, Epstein said, Kramer doesn’t own a car. As Kramer tried to explain to Flatt, she rode to Essex every day with a co-worker, Gloria Shanahan, and it was impossible to share a car with Shanahan without putting her at risk. Not only could her friend get sick, but her friend then could carry the virus into the nursing home, Epstein said.
“Flatt stated that Kramer’s concerns about the virus were overblown and that she should continue to ride to work with Shanahan but not tell her about the positive COVID test result,” according to the suit.
“Kramer said she was not comfortable with that as she felt it was unsafe and a risk to Gloria as well as the other employees and residents of Essex,” according to the suit.
Finally, although Kramer did not feel sick when she received her positive test results, she believed she still could face her own health risks working around some of the critically ill residents in the COVID unit, Epstein said. She did not believe that testing positive for the virus guaranteed her protection from further complications, he said.
According to the suit, after her conversation with Flatt, Kramer took two regularly scheduled days off and then called Essex to say that she planned to return to work only after the recommended quarantine period.
She was then told that she no longer had a job, according to the lawsuit. As far as Essex was concerned, she announced her retirement two days earlier, the suit alleged.
Kramer started working at Essex in 2006 and did not have immediate retirement plans, Epstein said.
“She’s someone who needed to work to live and now she has lost her job,” Epstein said. “It’s hard enough in this environment, with the pandemic, to find any job anywhere, let alone if you’re 64 years old. Who wants to hire you, you know? So it’s definitely been a hardship.”
