Hawaii: Employer’s Decision to Fill Injured Worker’s Position 10 Months After Injury Was not Discriminatory

An employer who waited 10 months after an employee’s work-related injury to fill the position and who offered the employee a number of positions when she sought post-recovery employment did not discriminate against the employee “solely because” of her work-related injury under HRS § 378-32(a)(2), held an appellate court in Hawaii. The employer offered evidence that the employee’s prolonged absence from work caused such a hardship that leaving her pre-work-injury position unfilled was no longer feasible. The court added that neither the language of the statute nor its legislative history suggested that employers were required to either leave a vacated position open or hire temporary employees to replace an injured employee who may be unable to return to their previous employment for lengthy periods of time. While the employer’s action was based upon the employee’s injury, it was not “solely because” of that injury. There was no indication that the justification was pretextual.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See In re BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of L.A. v. Hoshijo, 2018 Haw. App. LEXIS 414 (Sept. 28, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law