image of shopping carts

An employee of Ralphs Grocery Company, a subsidiary of The Kroger Company, has sued the company after being terminated allegedly for taking a medical leave due to breast cancer. The thirty-six year veteran employee alleges disability discrimination and wrongful termination.

In her thirty-six years of working at Ralphs, the plaintiff stated that she started out as a courtesy clerk. She was later promoted to a cashier, then performed the positions of self-check attendant and store greeter.

The lawsuit says that the plaintiff was diagnosed with breast cancer in February of 2013, while also suffering from a work-related knee injury. She started taking Thursdays off for chemotherapy and radiation treatments, then ended up having to take a medical leave due to her illness. While on medical leave, she sought financial assistance from Ralph’s Helping Hands Program. They apparently denied her request because did not meet the criteria for assistance.
The lawsuit says that Ralphs terminated her medical insurance while she was out on medical leave, which interfered with her necessary cancer treatments and examinations. Once she was medically released to return to work, her employment was terminated.

The plaintiff is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, including lost earnings, medical damages, damages for pain and suffering, and emotional distress damages.

Kroger has also been in the spotlight recently for allowing open-carry gun activists to parade through their stores.

By Hypatia Livingston

"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all."Writer, thinker, researcher, philosopher.

7 thoughts on “Kroger Company Faces Lawsuit For Firing Long-Term Employee With Breast Cancer”
  1. How does this even happen? This is not the first story I have heard where insurance gets just magically terminated right when a person needs it the most. This is just sick to think about. I know of both stores and I have never shopped at either, this is just another reason to dump them if you do shop there.

    1. I totally agree with you. I don’t shop at either one of these stores, but I’m sure that the people that do won’t be shopping there for much longer. I will never understand insurance companies, you pay all that money in for most of your life and when you need it most they drop you for the worst reasons. This happened to my Aunt and now she is going into debt just paying her hospital bills.

      1. This happens so much it is sick to really try and figure out how many times it happens. In the last five years I have had to battle with our own insurance over even the smallest of things. This year it is them not paying for two extractions that would have caused further damage to my kids mouth (will need braces and the baby teeth had to go, no choice, unless we wanted to spend thousands later down the road).

  2. Wasn’t there another company that did something like this to a worker? I swear I remember reading something about it and I know it was a big box type of company.

  3. This is absolutely terrible. When did places of employment become so terrible to their employees. This women has been with the store forever and they treat her like she is nothing to them. There are just no values left anymore. I hope that for her sake she wins the lawsuit and something more permanent can be done to fix the employee/employer relationship.

    1. Sick if you ask me. We pay high premiums to have insurance. Then when we need it they do something like this. I hope that she sues them and wins. I am so tired of hearing about the little person getting the short end of the stick.

    2. I hope it really opens the doors up for other people who are going through similar issues. It seems like we hear about these stories more and more lately. When is it going to stop? I can see letting someone go if they are bad but something like this just turns my stomach.

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