Jury awards fired Brewer woman $250,000

BANGOR – A jury awarded a Brewer woman $250,000 this week in a suit claiming that she was unfairly fired from her cashier’s job at a Big Apple convenience store because of her medical condition.

It took the Penobscot County Superior Court jury 30 minutes Tuesday to decide in favor of Diamond Murphy, awarding her $100,000 in compensatory damage after a little more than a day of testimony. The jury of eight also awarded Murphy $150,000 in punitive damages after finding the convenience store management and parent company, C.N. Brown Co., had acted intentionally with actual malice or reckless indifference to Murphy’s rights.

Murphy is deaf in her right ear and suffers from balance problems, the result of surgery in July 1994 to remove a cholesteatoma tumor, necessitating the removal of a portion of her inner ear. Murphy, who worked for the convenience store in Brewer from Sept. 21, 1998, to Jan. 11, 1999, claimed that she was fired because of her disability, including that she was not afforded the extra time needed for her to perform the end-of-shift paperwork.

Her attorney, A.J. Greif, said that the paperwork required Murphy to move and bend her head a lot, comparing numbers, causing her to get dizzy.

Reconciling gas and sales receipts usually takes 15 minutes, but Murphy was asking for 30 to 45 minutes and had stated she wasn’t sure if she could complete the work in that time, according to court documents.

But in court papers seeking a summary judgment to have the case dismissed, C.N. Brown had contended that Murphy was fired Jan. 11, 1999, having eaten food without paying for it. The company disputed that Murphy’s medical condition qualified as a disability as defined in the Maine Human Rights Act and the company also claimed that Murphy didn’t seek special accommodations. About a month after being hired, Murphy told the store’s manager that she didn’t require any special treatment, according to court documents.

In denying the motion for summary judgment, Justice Andrew Mead expressed “extreme skepticism” that Murphy’s condition fell within the scope of the Maine Human Rights Act, but noted that an affidavit by Murphy’s doctor concluded that the woman’s condition has affected her major life activities, and he allowed the case to continue.