Firings a ‘snore’ point
Apnea sufferers are suing for ‘bias’ after losing their jobs
You snooze, you lose — you sue.
Sleep-apnea-afflicted New Yorkers fired from high-stakes jobs are increasingly suing over their ousters, claiming disability discrimination.
At least three workers — Staten Island University Hospital dispatcher Helen Whitehurst, Greyhound bus driver Ronnie Allen and would-be city garbage man Michael Dellegrazie — have filed suits in recent months after their struggles with the weight-related condition cost them their jobs.
“Employers have to recognize that it’s not the person’s fault all the time, and that’s what happened with Helen. She nodded off a couple of times at work,” Whitehurst’s attorney, Bill Perniciaro, told The Post.
The 340-pound Staten Islander is suing Staten Island University Hospital for $10 million after being canned in 2014 for twice falling asleep at her job dispatching ambulances.
Her suit argues the quick catnaps were the result of her disability — and Perniciaro claims she didn’t do any damage by catching 40 winks, anyway.
“Helen didn’t have a job where it was critical that she be awake 100 percent of the time,” he said.
A sleep expert says apnea isn’t really a “disability,” and sufferers can do demanding jobs if they get treatment.
“It’s just like, if you have poor vision, you wear glasses and you fix it. It’s a manageable disease like asthma, poor vision. It’s treatable,” said Karen Lee, a clinical assistant professor of neurology at NYU Langone.
Allen, who first started driving Greyhound buses in 2011, says he started wearing a mask and lost weight after he was placed on a leave of absence due to his apnea.
But the company fired the Harlem man in 2014 anyway, according to his suit.
Greyhound said it could not comment on pending litigation but noted that drivers with sleep apnea are tested annually for treatment “compliance.”
And Dellegrazie was denied his desired gig at the city Sanitation Department due to his sleep apnea — so he’s suing to take it by force.
He claims he has a clean bill of health to drive garbage trucks, despite failing for years to provide the city with adequate medical documentation to prove it, court papers show.
The suits come after apneasuffering engineers were linked to two major train crashes — the 2016 Hoboken collision that killed one person and the 2017 Long Island Rail Road wreck in Brooklyn, which injured more than 100 people.
Dellegrazie and Allen declined to comment through their lawyers.
It’s just like, if you have poor vision, you wear glasses and you fix it. It’s a manageable disease like asthma, poor vision. It’s treatable. — Karen Lee, a clinical assistant professor of neurology at NYU Langone Health