A disabled nurse alleges in a lawsuit that Legacy Health assigned her to a heart failure hotline after she was diagnosed with heart failure and later forced her out of her job by misapplying its leave policy.
The lawsuit was filed March 27 in U.S. District Court in Portland on behalf of Amanda Zabloudil, a registered nurse who began working for Legacy in 1997. Zabloudil suffered from a serious medical condition that put her at high risk for COVID-19 exposure, according to the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff’s disability was a motivating factor in Defendant’s adverse employment action because Defendants knowingly and intentionally delayed Plaintiff’s placement in an accommodating position to cause her termination,” reads the lawsuit.
Zabloudil is represented by Jameson Gideon, Randy Harvey and Patrick Conroy of Sherwood-based law firm Employment Law Professionals NW. The lawsuit is seeking $1.8 million in damages from Legacy, which operates six hospitals.
Legacy spokesperson Kristin Whitney told The Lund Report in an email that the health system cannot comment on pending litigation. The Lund Report also reached out to Zabloudili’s attorneys for comment but received no response as of press time.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Oregon, Zabloudil’s doctors advised her that her medical condition put her at serious risk for complications and death if she contracted the virus. Zabloudil, a pediatric nurse, asked Legacy in early April to place her in a job limiting her exposure to the virus, according to the lawsuit.
But Legacy initially brushed off her requests and offered COVID-19 “screener” position, which she declined as being “antithetical to her accommodation request,” according to the lawsuit. Zabloudil counted her weeks waiting for an accommodation as a leave of absence under Legacy policies.
She was initially assigned in late May to Legacy’s employee health department and began taking additional work at Legacy’s COVID-19 hotline, which already had long wait times and was “under immense staffing demands,” according to the lawsuit.
The hotline needed additional nurse staff as far back as April, when Zabloudil made her accommodation request, and a manager expressed puzzlement to her that she hadn’t been assigned to it earlier, the lawsuit states.
“Accommodating Plaintiff would not have created an undue hardship because Defendant had numerous open positions that would have accommodated Plaintiff’s disability, and they did not assign her to them,” reads the lawsuit.
The same week Zabloudil was diagnosed with heart failure in July 2020, she was reassigned from the COVID-19 hotline to a program that involved returning patient phone calls and informing them of their own heart failure diagnosis, the lawsuit states.
Zabloudil, a pediatric nurse, required additional training for the assignment while other nurses were better suited for the heart failure hotline and weren’t diagnosed with heart failure, according to the lawsuit.
Zabloudil underwent two unsuccessful surgeries in 2020 that left her unable to work for weeks, according to the lawsuit. Zabloudil and her husband, Todd Zabloudil, filed a lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court last fall seeking $7.5 million from Legacy alleging her surgeon botched the second operation in September 2020, leaving her permanently disabled. The ongoing lawsuit alleges she sustained injuries to her right iliac and femoral arteries during the surgery and needed life-saving resuscitation.
In July 2021, Zabloudil was terminated from Legacy after exhausting her 52 weeks leave, according to the federal lawsuit. Legacy misapplied its leave policy and violated state and federal laws protecting disabled individuals, the lawsuit states.
A former resident of Eagle Creek in unincorporated Clackamas County, Zabloudil has since relocated to Arizona and is receiving federal disability benefits, according to the lawsuit.
Zabloudil earlier filed discrimination complaints against Legacy with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit included a copy of a Dec. 22 letter from the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries’ civil rights division to Zabloudil stating that it had dismissed her complaint because it did not find enough evidence to continue its investigation. The letter also authorized her to file a civil suit against Legacy within 90 days.
