A symptom of Jacob's injury was significant pain in his shoulder. His doctor prescribed opiate-based pain killers
Question:
A symptom of Jacob's injury was significant pain in his shoulder. His doctor prescribed opiate-based pain killers (which are highly addictive) to treat the pain. He warned Jacob to only use these sparingly, given the effects. Moreover, if too many of the painkillers were used, it could impair Jacob's attention and judgement. However, Jacob was not too concerned and used them fairly freely. He also spoke about the painkillers he was using as part of his treatment at work, including in front of his manager.
After a month back at work with accommodations, Jacob's direct manager began to notice strange behaviour. Jacob would be assigned duties, only for the manager to discover later that the duties had not been done. Jacob had never had this problem before. When the manager would talk to Jacob, Jacob would often be spaced out and unfocused, and would appear almost drowsy. Again, this had never happened before. After a few weeks of this, a serious accident occurred. Jacob was driving the electric cart when he crashed it into a wall of the store and pinned a customer's leg, causing an injury. When Jacob was questioned by his manager about this after the fact, he was unable to respond to questions, was unfocused, and kept dosing off. He was sent home for the rest of the day.
The manager then called you, the human resources officer, to know what to do. He wants to fire Jacob for this. He thinks Jacob was careless, and a customer was injured!
Are there any possible human rights issues here? What are they? (2 marks)
Does the employer have an obligation to take any action here before imposing discipline on Jacob? If so, what action is appropriate? (2 marks)
If there is a human rights issue, what is the test for whether discipline can nonetheless be imposed? What legal case does this test come from? (3 marks)
What forms of accommodation might be appropriate if there is a human rights issue, given the type of issue at stake? (3 marks).
Applied Regression Analysis and Other Multivariable Methods
ISBN: 978-1285051086
5th edition
Authors: David G. Kleinbaum, Lawrence L. Kupper, Azhar Nizam, Eli S. Rosenberg