
A U.S. Appeals Court recently denied a trucking company’s request to overturn a wrongful termination lawsuit.
According to court documents, back in 2009 TransAm Trucking employee Alphonse Maddin pulled over on Interstate 88 in Illinois because his fuel gauge was “below empty” and he was unable to find a TransAm approved fuel station. After stopping on the highway shoulder, he realized his trailer’s brake lines were frozen and locked up, leaving him stranded in sub-zero temperatures. To make matters worse, there was no heat in the cab because the truck’s auxiliary power unit did not work.
After calling his company at 11:17 p.m., he was advised that a TransAm Road Assist repair person would be dispatched to his location. The driver then fell asleep and was awakened two hours later by a phone call from his cousin at 1:18 a.m.
The court document explained:
According to [his cousin], Maddin’s speech was slurred and he sounded confused. When Maddin sat up, he realized his torso was numb and he could not feel his feet. He called Road Assist again and told the dispatcher his bunk heater was not working. He also told the dispatcher about his physical condition and asked when the repairperson would arrive. The dispatcher told Maddin to “hang in there.”
After waiting in freezing conditions for an additional thirty minutes, the driver unhitched his trailer and called a supervisor. He explained that “he couldn’t feel his feet and was having trouble breathing because of the cold.”
His supervisor, Larry Cluck, told him not to leave the scene and to “drag the trailer with its frozen brakes or remain with the trailer until the repair person arrived.”
Rather than suffer life-threatening damage, Maddin drove off without the trailer. 15 minutes later, the technician showed up, and Maddin returned to the trailer for the repair. One week later, he was terminated for abandoning the load.
Maddin filed an OSHA whisterblower complaint, which was initially denied, but later requested a hearing with a U.S. Department of Labor administrative law judge who took the driver’s side. On January 7th, 2013, the judge ordered TranAm to pay Maddin back-pay since his 2009 termination, rehire the driver, and remove all negative reports from his record.
TransAm appealed the decision, arguing that Maddin shouldn’t be protected under OSHA’s whistlerblower laws because he was not fired for refusing to operate unsafe equipment, but for abandoning company property.
In September 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit denied TransAm’s appeal, setting a precedent for future OSHA claims.
“Because the trailer was inoperable and the driver drove off without it, the driver could not have refused to ‘operate’ in unsafe conditions, but, rather he abandoned company property. Clearly, the agency thought this driver was terminated unfairly, and expanded its interpretation of the statute to allow him to pursue a claim,” reported Legal Newsline.
Adam R. Young, a lawyer at Seyfarth Shaw, estimated that the back-pay awarded to Maddin could exceed $280,000.