A worker who was fired one day after his doctor told his employer he would need surgery was not found to have been fired in bad faith, according to a judgement from an appeals court in Mississippi.

Bobby Lott worked for Corinthian Inc. He was working as an “at-will” employee, which means he could be fired at any time for any reason (most workers are actually employed this way, and even if it’s not outright stated by your employer most states still just presume that you are working “at-will”). He injured his eye when he was attaching legs to an ottoman in January of 2010. The leg ricocheted when he was trying to put it on and hit him in the right eye, and he told his supervisor, Tracy Wren, about the injury afterwards. Corinthian disputes that she was actually his supervisor and listed her as a “floater on the production line”, but Lott asserted that he had always been under the assumption she was his supervisor.

The Corinthian handbook states that failure to tell a supervisor of an injury is a reason to be terminated, and once an employee clocks out for the day it is presumed that they have reported any injuries or else they were fine that day. Lott had signed this handbook when he started. He worked the rest of the day he was injured, and the next day, but two days later he said he woke up and could not see out of his eye and was in pain. He saw two different eye specialists, and acknowledged that he had cataract surgery in his left eye years before but turned down the same surgery in his right eye. He was diagnosed with traumatic cataract and told he needed surgery. His doctor said this incident probably exacerbated his pre-existing condition and advised him to do light duty until the surgery.

Lott was fired on January 28^th, a day after Corinthian found out about his surgery and work restrictions. They said that he failed to follow work procedures when he did not report the injury. Lott said that was in bad faith, as they could have fired him that day but instead waited until they found out about his surgery to fire him.

Marsha McCollum served as the TPA agent on his case. She had been doing her own research and decided that his claim was a little bit questionable. No one saw the actual injury occur and he had an existing injury. Corinthian had paid him all of his due benefits up until the day he was fired and also started to pay him TTD workers’ comp until he finally got his surgery and was cleared to work in June of that year.

A Mississippi Workers’ Comp Commission judge decided that his termination was not in bad faith as Corinthian had paid all the benefits they owed and he was rightfully terminated. Lott sued for wrongful termination and damages from emotional distress but was again shut down by the appellate court.