As Biglaw firms attempt to get their employees back into the office at any cost in the wake of the pandemic, one Am Law 100 firm now stands accused of firing an immunocompromised staff member in retaliation for his request to work from home after receiving a cancerous diagnosis.
Steven Miller had worked as a litigation paralegal in Pillsbury’s New York office since 2013. In a suit he filed against the firm last week, he claims that despite talks of returning to the office during the coronavirus crisis, Pillsbury had previously allowed him to work from home following his 2021 diagnosis with JAK2, a “cancerous condition” that put him at high risk of contracting COVID-19. At the time, he’d submitted a letter from his doctor that urged him to work remotely, and the firm complied with his doctor’s orders, seeing as everyone else was still working from home.
As noted in the complaint, Miller was fired on February 15, 2022, shortly after he sent HR a January 26 letter from his oncologist requesting that he be allowed to work from home until July 2022 — a time that stood in conflict with the firm’s planned return-to-office date of February 22. The American Lawyer has the details on what Miller alleges happened next (which sounds quite reminiscent of a stealth layoff):
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