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Mom Sues Employer For Firing Her While Working From Hospital Bed During Chemotherapy

Mom Sues Employer For Firing Her While Working From Hospital Bed During Chemotherapy

A mother of four is suing her employer for breaching the Family and Medical Leave Act after she was unceremoniously fired days before Christmas while she was in hospital, where she continued to do her job from the hospital bed.

Her story is a heartening example of America’s draconian work culture and offers a downright dystopian look at the shocking indifference corporate America shows even to workers who go to extraordinary lengths to prioritize their jobs.

Bonnie Lam, a mother of 4, is suing State Street Bank for firing her while working from her hospital bed during cancer treatment.

Lam’s story is one that seems like it could only happen in America, where labor protections for workers lag far behind almost every rich country on Earth.

At the time of his firing, Lam, a veteran finance professional, was hospitalized for cancer treatment. Despite her serious illness, she continued to work from her hospital bed after, she claims, she was urged by her employer, Boston-based State Street Bank, not to take disability leave for her illness.

She has now filed a lawsuit against State Street Bank of New York for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act. A 2022 federal court ruling found it illegal to discourage employees from taking FMLA leave.

A viral photo, taken from one of the legal files in Lam’s case, paints a truly stunning picture of Lam’s situation. It shows her in a hospital bed, with a mask over her face and surrounded by monitoring machines, as she works diligently on her laptop.

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Lam was undergoing emergency chemotherapy for a 9/11-related cancer at the time of her firing.

Lam suffers from a cancer called leiomyosarcoma, which attacks the body’s smooth muscle tissues involved in involuntary movements, such as those in the stomach, intestines and blood vessels.

Like a staggering number of sufferers of the rare disease, Lam contracted it from exposure to toxic dust clouds emitted from the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Lam lived just a few blocks from the Twin Towers at the time and worked at 4 World Trade Center, a smaller building in the complex that had to be demolished after the attacks.

Like many others, Lam missed being at work during the attacks because she was running late caring for her then-2-year-old son.

In 2022, Lam discovered that the cancer had spread to her lungs and had to be treated with emergency chemotherapy to save her life. After being discouraged from taking FMLA, she continued her work from her hospital bed.

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The mother says she was fired after discovering her employer was overcharging clients by millions of dollars.

State Street Bank denies all allegations made against them by Lam and insists she was fired as “part of planned organizational changes”, according to a spokesman who spoke to the New York Postwho added that “we sympathize with her health situation and wish her well.”

Lam tells an entirely different story, however. In court filings, she claims those “organizational changes” included only another termination of her 55-person team besides herself. She advertises it the disease was considered “inconvenient” by superiors.

But even more striking is the nature of the work Lam says she was doing from that hospital bed when she was fired — raising alarms at State Street Bank about $1.5 million in overbilling of banking clients around the world that it takes discovered.

“In the years, months and weeks leading up to Ms. Lam’s termination, she constantly notified State Street superiors of the billing and systems failures he discovered almost daily,” her court documents state. Lam says she discovered State Street employees were deleting financial records related to her reports.

If her allegations are true, it wouldn’t be the first time. State Street Bank was ordered to pay a $115 million criminal penalty in 2021 after it was caught running “a scheme to defraud a number of the bank’s customers by secretly overcharging them for expenses related to the bank’s custody of assets customers”. according to the Department of Justice.

Lam’s attorney, Shane Seppinni, says he plans to hold State Street Bank liable as well. “State Street refuses to take responsibility for the illegal firing of Ms. Lam, a 9/11 cancer victim,” he said. “So a New York jury is going to have to teach this trillion dollar Boston bank a lesson.”

Hopefully it’s a lesson that not only other corporations take heed, but our legislators as well. Because it is unthinkable and barbaric that America’s veneration of capitalism and the “work ethic” allows employees to be susceptible to such totally corrupt indifference first of all.

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.