Fired after a workplace injury, this Alabama man fought back and won $750,000

Catherine Stewart

Catherine Stewart's husband suffered an injury on the job and was terminated. A judge said the company retaliated against him and awarded the family $750,000.

Several months after he started working as a driver for Hanna Truck Line in 2012, Kenneth Stewart attended a company party at the Samford University basketball arena named for the company owner.

The trucking company is linked to Hanna Steel, which was launched in the 1950s by Walter J. Hanna, who rose to fame as the man who cleaned up lawless Phenix City as the head of the Alabama National Guard.

“He was proud to be part of it,” said Catherine Stewart, Kenneth’s widow.

That feeling didn’t last long. Soon after, a workplace injury sidelined Stewart and he got fired by supervisors at Hanna Truck Line. He sued the company for workers’ compensation and wrongful termination, saying the company retaliated against him for seeking legal help in his injury case. A judge in Bessemer last month ordered the company to pay $750,000 to Stewart’s family.

Attorneys for Hanna Truck Line said they could not comment because they have pending motions in the court asking the judge to vacate the judgment or award a new trial.

The judgment came too late for Kenneth Stewart, who died from a heart attack in 2019. His widow, Catherine Stewart, said she was overjoyed with the judge’s decision but wishes the company had settled the case earlier and spared her family years of stress.

“Nothing is going to bring him back,” Catherine Stewart said. “I’d give anything if they had just settled a long time ago when he was still here.”

Greg Denny, an attorney who represented Stewart, said it’s unusual to see that high a judgment in a wrongful termination case. Judge Eugene Verin wrote in his judgment that evidence showed the company punished Stewart more severely than two other employees who accepted low settlements for their workplace injuries.

“[Hanna Trucking] surmised [Stewart’s] workers compensation claim was unlike any it had encountered before and was likely to cause it unwanted expense,” Verin wrote. “That [Hanna Trucking’s] President insisted that it not pay [Stewart] anything more than [two other employees] despite the dissimilarities in how it treated [Stewart] and its failure to take into account his individual circumstances.”

On April 25, 2013, Stewart was covering a load with a tarp when a strap broke, wrenching his left arm and injuring that shoulder. He reported the injury and received care for a torn rotator cuff at an urgent care in Tuscaloosa, according to court documents.

His employers placed him on light duty and switched him to an attendance system that penalized workers with one week of suspension for missing work without calling, according to exhibits in the case. About a month and a half later, supervisors suspended him for failing to call in after a doctor’s appointment related to his shoulder. In his judgment, Verin wrote that supervisors at Hanna Truck Line already knew about the appointment.

When he objected to driving while taking prescribed painkillers after surgery, his employers offered to let him sleep on site, according to court documents. He was then terminated when he said he couldn’t report to work due to severe pain. The company never offered unpaid leave or told Stewart he could appeal his termination, according to Verin’s judgment.

Denny, who specializes in worker’s compensation cases, said the case was unlike any he’s ever seen. At one point, Stewart offered to settle for $25,000 to stave off bankruptcy but Hanna Trucking refused because two other drivers who suffered similar injuries received much less.

Alabama has the nation’s lowest rate of compensation for certain types of workplace injuries. Denny said many companies including Hanna Truck Line are self-insured, so they pay directly when employees get hurt.

“This was all set up as being a beneficent system,” Denny said. “This is supposed to be charitable in some respects. It’s supposed to help you get by.”

The system didn’t work that way for his client, he said. After Stewart sued for wrongful termination, attorneys for Hanna responded with a counterclaim. The long legal ordeal drove the Stewarts into bankruptcy, Catherine Stewart said.

Attorneys for Hanna dropped the countersuit, which Verin described as “baseless” in his order.

“The Court concludes that the filing of the counterclaim was exactly for the purpose the Plaintiff alleges - to intimidate and harass the Plaintiff,” the judgment said.

Attorneys for Hanna Truck Line argued that Stewart wasn’t fired for hiring a lawyer for his workers’ compensation claim, but because he missed work in violation of an agreement he signed after his injury.

Verin awarded the Stewart Family $250,000 in damages for pain and suffering, which covered the loss of personal property, self-esteem and suicide attempts. The other $500,000 of the judgment was to punish Hanna Trucking for wrongdoing. Attorneys for the company can appeal the decision if Verin does not vacate or grant a new trial.

Stewart won his workers’ compensation case in 2017 but appeals held up payments until 2018. Checks began arriving in the middle of the year but ran late around the holidays. Denny and Catherine Stewart said her husband experienced a lot of stress in December and died from a heart attack a week after the New Year.

Catherine said her husband complained of chest pains but didn’t ask to go to the hospital. She went out on some errands and returned an hour later to find her husband on the ground outside the shed, where he’d been moving some tools.

She said the long legal fight nearly destroyed her husband, who refused to give up.

“He wanted his arm fixed,” Catherine Stewart said. “And he just wanted them to take care of it. This could have never been if they had done what they should have done. He was devastated that they would go to such lengths to try to prevent him from getting his medical care. And then it never stopped.”

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