By DAN CROWLEY
Staff Writer
Daily Hampshire Gazette
NORTHAMPTON — A former worker at Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Northampton has been awarded $120,636 in damages plus interest in a workplace discrimination case over his loss of a job because he is blind in one eye, according to a recent state ruling.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination awarded Marc Kogut of Westfield $75,000 for emotional distress and $45,636 for lost wages in the Sept. 29 ruling.
The commission also ordered the company to pay $79,425 in attorneys’ fees and $3,528 in legal costs. The Coca-Cola Co. has the right to appeal the decision in Superior Court within 30 days.
“Coca-Cola is disappointed with this ruling,” the company wrote in a statement emailed to the Gazette. “Coca-Cola is deeply committed to fostering an inclusive workplace free of discrimination. We value diversity and are committed to providing opportunities for people with disabilities.”
The long-running case began in 2008 when Kogut first filed a complaint with MCAD. He began working as a temporary employee in a machine operator position at the bottling plant on Industrial Drive in July 2007, and was then offered a full-time position in that role seven months later after a supervisor recommended that he apply for the job.
Kogut had a physical examination before taking the new job — but, after revealing to a physician that he was permanently blind in his left eye, Coca-Cola terminated his temporary employment and rescinded his full-time job offer, according to MCAD records.
Coca-Cola determined that Kogut’s disability prevented him from performing the “essential functions” of a machine operator because the duties included forklift driving. The company believed Kogut “would pose a risk of future injury to himself and others,” according to a summary of facts in the case.
“The case collapsed because of an inconsistent and illegal policy as it relates to forklift driving and Mr. Kogut,” his attorney Timothy J. Ryan, of Egan, Flanagan and Cohen in Springfield, said Wednesday.
An MCAD commissioner determined in 2012 that forklift driving was not an essential function of the entry-level machine operator position Kogut sought to fill, and that Coca-Cola had “failed to engage in an interactive discussion with (Kogut) as a qualified handicapped individual to identify possible accommodations prior to his temporary employment and rescinding the offer of permanent employment,” according to the commission’s September ruling.
“If you don’t do that, it’s a status-based discrimination,” Ryan said of the process.
Coca-Cola had appealed the 2012 decision, which MCAD upheld in last month’s ruling.
The commissioner also found that Coca-Cola failed to conduct an individual assessment of Kogut’s capabilities, “relying instead on unjustified assumptions” about his disability based on “generalized guidelines regarding visual acuity and forklift operation,” according to the ruling.
MCAD is the chief civil rights enforcement agency in Massachusetts and enforces federal and state civil rights laws in the areas of employment, lending, housing, and public accommodations. State law authorizes the MCAD to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate discrimination cases.
Dan Crowley can be reached at [email protected].
