Seizure Helps Save HA Worker's Job, Spurring New Cure
By DAVID SIMS

JOAN R. SALZMAN: Hearing produced a benefit.

A petition by the Housing Authority to place an employee on an involuntary leave of absence because of a seizure disorder was denied by the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings after the employee suffered a seizure mid-trial which caused his malady to be properly diagnosed.

The employee, who is not named in the decision, works mostly behind the counter in an application information office at 55 West 125th Street, where he assists housing applicants in person and on the phone. He has lost consciousness on the job six times, five of them in 2007 and once in February 2008, each time having no memory of the incident. Ernestine Thomas, manager of the office, described the incidents as seizures, with the employee "falling from the chair, foaming at, and sometimes bleeding from, the mouth," according to her testimony.

Added Drama At Hearing

As the incidents continued, the employee was diagnosed as unfit to perform his duties by Dr. Arthur H. Weiss, a neurologist whom the employee went to for testing at the direction of the HA. The HA subsequently told the employee he would be placed on an involuntary leave of absence, under Section 72 of the Civil Service Law. The employee objected and asked for a hearing, where his own neurologist, Dr. Joel Cohen, testified by telephone along with Ms. Thomas and Dr. Weiss.

This hearing then played host to a dramatic turn of events. Dr. Cohen testified on behalf of the employee, saying that he had prescribed him medication for migraine headaches, which the employee said he had been suffering from, and that he had not been able to diagnose a seizure disorder. As Dr. Cohen testified, the employee suddenly had a violent seizure. The report said the employee "let out a high pitched scream ... and he fell from his chair to the floor ... [his] body stiffened, his face was twitching, he was convulsing, he turned red, he was foaming at the mouth, some blood appeared in his phlegm ... and then he was breathing deeply as if sleeping and snoring."

As this occurred, 911 was called and the employee's symptoms were described over the phone to Dr. Cohen, who later revised his diagnosis to state that the employee "also likely has epilepsy," stating that the condition did not render him unfit to perform an office job, and that the employee posed no serious danger to himself or others. This was reinforced by the testimony of Ms. Thomas, despite the fact that she was testifying on behalf of the HA. According to the report Ms. Thomas said that even after a seizure the employee "always returned promptly to work, always caught up with the work by the following day, and that he did his work and was well-liked by his co-workers."

'Didn't Show He's Unfit'

Administrative Law Judge Joan R. Salzman, who presided over the hearing, decided that the HA "had not met its burden of showing that the employee's condition rendered him unfit to perform the duties of his position," and recommended dismissal of the petition.

She also commented on the unusual circumstances of the hearing itself, adding in the decision that "it must be noted ... that [the HA's] pursuit of this matter is laudable, because the Authority's attention to respondent's health clearly led, remarkably, to a modified diagnosis in mid-trial and a new treatment by respondent's own neurologist."