Hawaii Helps Disabilities

New York Times

By BLOOMBERG NEWS Published: September 29, 2009

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Sears Roebuck & Company had agreed to a $6.2 million settlement in a case under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A federal court judge approved a consent decree in the case, in which Sears was accused of firing employees instead of providing reasonable accommodations for them. In a statement, the commission said the settlement was the largest ever among the disability-related cases it had handled. Agency lawyers said they had found more than 100 cases of Sears employees who sought to return to work with an accommodation and were fired. A spokeswoman for Sears, Kimberly Freely, said that although the company “continues to believe that it reasonably accommodates” employees on leave because of work-related injuries o rillnesses, it settled the case because the legal proceedings could have taken another five years and “considerable expense” to resolve.