Feeling sick from the legal battle is different from feeling sick from the Federal agency job you filed a complaint of discrimination against.
The stress and emotional damage that occurs when a complainant has to fight in court is traumatic and makes you feeling sick all the time, but it is not related to the original discrimination claim.
If you cannot seem to separate the two in your medical documentation, then the agency will deem them related to the eeoc legal process and deny as much of your medical bills and expenses as possible.
The Commission has held that a complainant may not recover non-pecuniary compensatory damages for pain or stress associated with prosecution of an EEO complaint. Rountree v. Department of Agriculture, EEOC Appeal No. 01941906 (July 7, 1995), aff’d, EEOC Request No. 05950919 (February 15, 1996). Therefore, an award of damages must reflect only the harm experienced as a direct and proximate result of the agency’s discriminatory act and cannot include relief for harm related to the EEO process. Olsen v. Department of Defense, EEOC Appeal No. 01956675 (July 29, 1998).
In my reviews of other discrimination claims that take several years to complete, I find an overwhelming desire for the agency to use the option of cutting large chunks of the requested award, by claiming the damages did not occur during employment, but during the legal process. They use this as a broad stroke to deny deny deny, because its easier than finding similar cases to reduce an award.
The record indicates that the stress and depression experienced by complainant during the treatment period of June 17, 1994 through February 27, 1996 were attributable to the delays in the processing and investigation of the instant complaint. The Commission notes that compensatory damages provisions were not added to EEO statutes to address how an agency litigates an EEO complaint alleging employment discrimination, but to address how an agency treated an applicant or an employee in an employment-related context. See Appleby v. Department of the Army, EEOC Appeal 01933897 (March 4, 1994). Therefore, the Commission has held that a complainant is not entitled to compensatory damages caused by the stress of participating in the EEO process. See Rountree v. Department of Agriculture, EEOC Appeal No. 01941906 (July 7, 1995). We find that the agency awards of $796.25 and $353.60 were not warranted as complainant failed to establish that his medical treatment was necessitated by the discrimination that occurred prior to his move from the Ottawa National Forest in December 1992. Based on the same reasoning, we also find that the medication costs incurred in 1994, 1995, and 1996, as well as the services and costs related to complainant’s treatment by St. Mary’s Hospital and the Northern Wisconsin Psychological Associates shall not be awarded as compensatory damages.
