HMC Civil Rights Law PLLC is pleased to announce that we have reached a resolution in the case of Veith v. Tyson Fresh Meat Inc. at a private mediation with Michael Russell. We expect to finalize the settlement within 30 days.
Veith sued Tyson in November 2019, alleging that she was discriminated against and retaliated against when she requested a leave of absence under Tyson’s policies due to her anxiety disorder.
The case moved forward on several claims, including an ADA failure to accommodate the suit, after the court partially granted summary judgment to Tyson and found that Veith had presented enough evidence to move her failure to accommodate the claim forward.
We are pleased that we were able to reach a resolution on this matter and look forward to finalizing the settlement in the coming months.
About the Case
In November 2019, Laura Veith filed a lawsuit against her former employer, Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc., alleging that she was discriminated against based on her disability and retaliated against her for requesting a leave of absence under Tyson’s policies.
Veith suffers from an anxiety disorder and requested a five-day workweek instead of the six days she was scheduled to work. Tyson denied her request and terminated her employment in late January 2018.
Tyson moved for summary judgment, which U.S. District Judge Eli J. Richardson granted in part in March 2022. He axed the Tennessee Disability Act and FMLA claims that Veith abandoned in the case but found that her ADA claims had legs. Tyson argued that Veith attempted to skirt around an essential function of her job — working 70-80 hours and up to six days a week — through her accommodation request, which defeats her failure to accommodate the ADA claim.
Veith countered that her job description does not dictate this amount of work as a requirement and that the plant could have accommodated the five-day limit through a rotation schedule.
Judge Richardson said Tyson did not put forward enough evidence to demonstrate that working 70-80 hours and up to six days a week was essential to Veith’s job, moving her failure to accommodate the claim forward.
Her ADA discrimination and retaliation claims also moved forward after Judge Richardson said that a jury could find that the reasons for her firing were pretextual based on the evidence she presented.
We are so pleased that justice has been served and our client’s rights were upheld.
