National Grid must pay 2 workers a total of $3.1M for denying them remote work after pandemic

The National Grid gas company must pay a total of $3.1 million to two ex-workers with health issues for rejecting their requests to continue working from home after the pandemic, a Brooklyn jury has ruled.

The utility firm, which has millions of customers in New York, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as state and city human-rights laws, by refusing to allow emergency-gas dispatchers Luciano Russo and George Messiha to continue their telework schedules to better manage their medical conditions, according to the Oct. 10 ruling in federal court.

The verdict is potentially precedent-setting by saying telework can be invoked as a fair and reasonably protected accommodation for workers under the disability law.

“Employers, mainly large ones, do view disabled workers as a group seeking privilege, just like [National Grid’s] lawyer said,” said Arthur Schwartz, the lawyer for the plaintiff and also general counsel for the Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York.

“They better look at this verdict and think twice,” he said.

National Grid allowed all of its dispatchers including Russo and Messiha to work from home during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak that hit in March 2020. The remote workers were equipped with laptops and mobile phones.

The workers’ federal suit, filed in 2023, claimed their productivity increased while assigning crews to emergencies such as gas leaks.

NG switched to a hybrid schedule in July 2021 after the pandemic subsided.

NG in June 2022 then informed Russo and Messina that their reasonable-accommodation requests to continue to stay home would no longer be granted.

Russo, employed at NG/Brooklyn Union Gas since 2002, has serious back problems, diabetes and gastro-intestinal issues.

Messiha, who worked at NG since 1993, had hip surgery, suffers from back pain and walks with a limp, the suit said.

Because NG wouldn’t allow them to continue to work remotely, both plaintiffs said they were forced to go on paid medical sick leave. The utility giant stopped payment to them in early 2023 and categorized them as “sick-no pay” employees, the suit said.

The jury ordered NG to pay both Russo and Messiha $1 million in punitive damages. The company also was directed to provide back pay and money for “emotional distress.”

In total, the jury awarded Russo $1.56 million and Messiha $1.55 million.

National Grid failed to persuade the jury that allowing Russo and Messiha to work from home constituted an “undue hardship” to the company, the ruling said.

The jury trial lasted five days in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Natasha Merle.

“In his closing, the NG lawyer told the jury that the plaintiffs weren’t really disabled and that they were seeking `personal privilege.’ Frankly, I used that statement to rile up the jury,” Schwartz said.

National Grid’s attorney had no comment.

Remote work has been a revolution in the work place, with many firms still offering a hybrid schedule of some work from the office and some from home.

Some jobs are completely or partly remote while other firms and business titans prefer having their workers in the office.