Woman fired for dementia sues state

A former Airway Heights Correctional Center worker who suffered a traumatic head injury is suing the Washington state Department of Corrections, saying she shouldn’t have been fired for having dementia.

Carol Carver, 58, of Airway Heights, had complained to her supervisors she was distracted by fellow employees who entertained themselves by loudly mocking inmate mail, including ridiculing nude photographs and magazines sent to prisoners, state documents indicate. She was sent to a psychologist, who diagnosed her with dementia, which became the basis for her firing.

In a case that raises questions over how far employers must go to accommodate workers suffering from dementia, Carver filed suit last month in Spokane County Superior Court, alleging that her April 2005 firing violated state disability employment codes.

A 10-year department veteran and former corrections officer, Carver claimed that supervisors refused to accommodate her disability or to help her find other suitable work, court documents show. She’s seeking payment for economic loss and court costs, and for mental anguish and emotional distress.

Carver, whose head injury was not described, asked several times to be reassigned because her coworkers regularly played loud music, talked and laughed loudly, told inappropriate jokes and read inmate mail out loud , she wrote in documents filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Seattle.

The other workers made “inappropriate comments about those who wrote to inmates and what was in the letters,” and made fun of photographs of nude women and adult magazines sent to the prisoners, Carver wrote.

Corrections workers are required to screen inmate correspondence for pornography and other material and it would be natural for them to discuss it, a state lawyer said Friday. Carl P. Warring, an assistant attorney general, said he didn’t know what policies, if any, governed the tenor of such talks.

“The implication that there was a melee down there is wrong,” Warring said. “If that was going on, it wasn’t condoned by the administration.”

Carver’s lawsuit comes a year after the state Personnel Appeals Board refused to reinstate her, concluding she was unfit to work as an office assistant in a position that demanded “on the spot decision making, multi-tasking, speed and efficiency, especially in an environment where distractions were commonplace,” documents showed.

If Carver were interested in retaining her job, she would have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the appeals board decision, Warring said. Instead, her suit simply seeks economic damages.

“It’s a case about money, not about getting her job back,” he said.

Documents indicated that Carver asked several times for accommodations that would have allowed her to keep her job or find another within the agency, only to be denied.

Carver said that she was stigmatized because of her head injury and then sent to a state-chosen psychologist, who diagnosed her with dementia. Department supervisors then used the psychologist’s findings to fire her, Carver alleged. She urged supervisors to consider her long work history, her education and her diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, a bowel disorder typically aggravated by stress.

Carver’s complaints were upheld by the EEOC. “I have considered all the evidence disclosed during the investigation and have determined that the allegations are true,” wrote Director A. Luis Lucero Jr. in a May decision. The case has been forwarded to civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice for review, according to an August notification.

State documents indicated that Superintendent Maggie Miller-Stout tried to accommodate Carver by reducing her duties, including responsibilities for handling inmate money orders.

She sent Carver to see the state psychologist to determine whether incidents of insubordination and confusion were “willful or whether there was another underlying reason for her behavior and performance.” Carver was not assigned to another job because no appropriate position was available, documents said.

Carver’s lawsuit apparently accepts the state’s diagnosis of dementia. It seeks damages for economic loss, mental anguish and emotional distress and legal fees. Carver’s Spokane phone has been disconnected, and she couldn’t be reached for comment.

Her lawyer, Paul J. Burns of Spokane, said last week he couldn’t discuss his client’s case beyond information in the court documents.