A Hennepin County jury today found that G&K Services retaliated against truck driver James Dubiel for making a Workers Compensation claim. Dubiel was injured on the job when a car lost control and sideswiped his delivery truck. Dubiel filed a report of injury and G&K then fired him, claiming that he had not provided truthful information in a pre-employment physical.
The jury found that Mr. Dubiel’s filing of a Workers’ Compensation claim was a motivating factor in G&K’s decision to terminate him and awarded Dubiel $111,000 for lost wages and emotional distress, as well as $250,000 in punitive damages.
Dubiel’s attorney Michelle Dye Neumann from Halunen Law remarked: “James Dubiel loved his job. This made his termination particularly painful, to say nothing of the difficulty of finding work in this economy. This verdict lets employers know that the laws mean what they say. Employees who are injured on the job cannot be fired because they report an injury and seek the compensation due to them under the law.”
