The following two articles relate how DPA member John (Skipper) Sprague won his ADA discrimination case against United Airlines in federal court, then afterward settled with the airline in order to forestall the loss of his victory in case United entered bankruptcy.

BY THANASSIS CAMBANIS
Boston Globe Staff
August 8, 2002

Five years of anger and frustration ended yesterday for a deaf airline mechanic when a federal judge ruled that United Airlines had papered over its discrimination with a flurry of sham reasons not to hire him.

In a 43-page ruling, US District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. ordered United to offer John Sprague, 40, a job and pay him at least $320,000 in damages and lost wages.

''It's been really hard for me to wait this long, but right now I'm so happy,'' Sprague said from his home in Grafton yesterday. ''This is a great victory for everyone who has disabilities.''

Advocates for the deaf and hearing impaired hailed the decision as a significant step forward for the Americans with Disabilities Act.

''We litigate cases like this so that employers in the future won't discriminate against people,'' said Jane K. Alper, a senior attorney with the Disability Law Center in Boston. ''This decision has huge significance. It proves that the ADA does work.''

For Sprague, who has been deaf since birth, the decision means he can return to the career that has been his passion since childhood. As a teenager, he learned to fly small planes. He took his first full-time job fixing planes at Taunton Airport in 1986, and never let the fact that he can't hear most sounds get in his way.

He won rave reviews for his acumen as a mechanic. During the course of his lawsuit in federal court, former supervisors said Sprague used lip reading, speech, and notes to communicate well with colleagues.

In 1997, Sprague finally reached his goal: working for a major airline. United Airlines offered him a job as a line mechanic at Logan Airport on April 8 of that year. But within weeks, a senior executive at UAL rescinded the offer.

Instead, United gave Sprague a job in a maintenance shop in San Francisco, even though he had filed a discrimination suit against the company after the Logan job was withdrawn.

For nearly a year, Sprague commuted every week to the West Coast, faxing pictures to his two daughters when he couldn't come home to see them. He later took a job as a mechanic for AirTran at Logan, which he held until that airline cut its staff two years ago.

Since then, he has worked as a freelance landscaper and carpenter while waiting for O'Toole's ruling on his discrimination lawsuit.

O'Toole, who heard the case in a jury-waived trial in May 2000, ruled yesterday that United Airlines acted in ''bad faith'' when it argued that Sprague could not perform critical duties of a line mechanic and expressed concern for his safety on a busy airport tarmac.

''United's shifting explanation of its reasons for withdrawing the job offer undermines United's credibility and suggests that the company simply did not want to employ a deaf line mechanic,'' O'Toole wrote.

United spokesman Chris Brathwaite said yesterday that the airline was only concerned about its employees' safety, including Sprague's. ''We don't think we violated any laws or policies,'' Brathwaite said. ''At United, we were very disappointed in the outcome of the case.''

The airline has not yet decided whether to appeal the judge's decision, he added.

Sprague can hear speech but can't distinguish words. With the help of digital hearing aids, however, he can detect a significant range of sounds, including airplane warnings and irregular engine noises.

''His life has been on hold since the job got withdrawn in 1997,'' said Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represented Sprague at trial along with Alper and attorney Harold Lichten. ''This has just been his life's dream.''

The trial before O'Toole lasted nearly a month and featured detailed testimony from other airline mechanics and hearing specialists. The evidence convinced O'Toole that Sprague, despite his disability, could conduct all the essential functions of a line mechanic.

''This is the quintessential ADA case,'' Liss-Riordan said. ''United Airlines made assumptions about John Sprague because of his disability, and those assumptions were wrong.''

Tom Boudrow, executive director of the Massachusetts State Association for the Deaf, said companies are gradually learning not to ''create invisible walls'' that keep out the disabled.

''It's a shame that [Sprague] had to wait five years for the law to tell the company what is obvious: that it is blatant discrimination,'' Boudrow said.

Reprinted with permission

'DLC's victory in Sprague v. United Airlines'

BY JANE K. ALPER
Senior Attorney, Disability Law Center

On Monday, November 25, 2002, John Sprague began working as a line mechanic for United Airlnes at JFK Airport in New York City. It's a job he's been waiting for for over five years.

John Sprague is profoundly deaf. At an early age he developed a fascination with airplanes after seeing his father off on frequent business trips. During his freshman year at Gallaudet (the only university in the world that caters primarily to deaf students) he met a classmate who was a licensed pilot. It had never dawned on John that a deaf person could fly a plane, and the encounter changed his life. He withdrew from Gallaudet and began taking classes at Wentworth Institute in Boston, which offered a program in aviation mechanics. He also began taking flying lessons at a private airport in Taunton, doing odd jobs around the airfield to pay for his lessons. He obtained his pilot's license and, with the assistance of Greater Boston Legal Services, which intervened when the FAA threatened to deny him a mechanic's license because of his deafness, be became a licensed mechanic as well. He worked successfully as a mechanic for small private airlines for over 15 years, earning a number of awards for his achievements.

In the early 90s, he decided to try to get a job with a major airline. After researching various airlines and perfecting job seeking techniques, he decided to focus on getting a job with United. He visited United's operations at Logan Airport, where the staff were so impressed with him that they recommended that he be hired. In April 1997 United offered him a job as a line mechanic at Logan. Three days before he was scheduled to start work, he received a call telling him that the offer had been rescinded.

Someone higher up in management who knew nothing about Mr. Sprague except that he was deaf decided that it would be unsafe for a deaf mechanic to work on the tarmac around moving vehicles. Mr. Sprague tried to convince United to change its mind, suggesting a number of devices and accommodations, including equipment that converted sound to vibrations, new hearing aids, and assignment to the midnight shift when airport traffic was greatly reduced. United rejected his suggestions out of hand. Instead, United offered Mr. Sprague a job working in their engine repair shop in San Francisco. He finally accepted that job and worked in San Francisco for 15 months, commuting to Massachusetts on weekends to be with his wife and two young daughters.

Soon after United withdrew the job offer at Logan, Mr. Sprague contacted DLC, and we filed suit against United in federal district court. When it became clear that United would not back down, making a trial inevitable, we recruited Harold Lichten and Shannon Liss-Riordan of Pyle, Rome, Lichten & Ehrenberg to co-counsel the case.

In the months before trial, United repeatedly revised its reasons for withdrawing the job offer. It soon became evident that Mr. Sprague was in fact able to perceive sounds in the work environment. United then changed tack, claiming that Mr. Sprague would be unable to perform many job functions that required radio or intercom communications. However, that claim was undermined by subsequent events. Through one of his expert witnesses, a mechanic employed by AirTran, Mr. Sprague obtained a line mechanic job for AirTran where he performed many of the tasks that United claimed he would be unable to do because of his deafness. When the case was tried in May, 2000, United was reduced to arguing that Mr. Sprague was not qualified for the line mechanic job largely because he would be unable to determine whether the passenger entertainment system was working perfectly.

We did a lot of work to counteract United's changing reasons for its decision. We visited Logan with an acoustical expert who measured sounds at the airport, and using these measurements, we were able to show that, with hearing aids, Mr. Sprague could detect those sounds. We located two other deaf airline mechanics who testified at trial. We videotaped United's operations at Logan to demonstrate what line mechanics actually do, and the videotapes helped us refute a number of United's claims. We subpoenaed United's maintenance records and were able to establish that repairs of passenger entertainment systems constituted less than one percent of the work done by United mechanics.

We decided to waive a jury because of concern that United would play on jurors' fears by raising the issue of passenger safety at trial, although it had not identified this as an issue beforehand. We were also concerned that the vast amount of technical information presented at trial might bore or confuse a jury. Although we waited more than two years for Judge O'Toole to issue his decision, we are convinced that we made the right choice.

The decision, handed down on August 7, 2002, was entirely favorable to Mr. Sprague. Judge O'Toole ordered United to hire Mr. Sprague as a line mechanic with seniority retroactive to the date he would have started working in 1997 and awarded back and front pay, the maximum compensatory and punitive damages available under the ADA, and pre-judgment interest. In addition, United was ordered to reimburse plaintiff's costs and attorneys' fees. The entire amount of the judgment, with interest, costs and fees, came to over a million dollars.

The decision makes it clear that the judge was influenced by United's failure to engage in any sort of interactive process with Mr. Sprague, as the ADA prescribes, to investigate reasonable accommodations that would have assisted him in performing the line mechanic job and by United's shifting reasons for finding him unqualified which, in the judge's view, undermined its credibility and demonstrated bad faith. The decision is available on line at the district court web site, www.mad.uscourts.gov.

We think the decision is important because it demonstrates that, if given the right information, courts may re-fuse to accept an employer's asserted reasons for its action at face value. Our intensive and painstaking efforts to develop evidence that undermined the validity of United's claims made that result possible. The case also represents a welcome victory for the little guys-a dedicated client, a non-profit organization, and a small public interest firm- that bested a huge corporation represented by two huge law firms.

Unfortunately, our triumph was tempered by the events of 9/11 and their devastating impact on the airline industry. In an effort to stave off bankruptcy, United has severely curtailed its operations and laid off large numbers of employees. In light of recent developments, we reached a settlement with United. Although the terms of the agreement are confidential, it is fair to say that the agreement accomplishes Mr. Sprague' s main goals in the case.

And on November 25, his dream of working as a line mechanic for a major airline became a reality.

Reprinted by permission