Say What? - Tourette's Syndrome as a legal defense - Brief Article

Workforce, Oct, 2000

Imagine that one of your firm's service personnel swore like a drunken sailor at your customers. Would you let him do it? Suspend him? Move him to job with no customer contact? Fire him?

Now add this piece of info to the puzzle: What if the employee claimed he couldn't help swearing at people because he had Tourette's Syndrome (TS), a condition that can cause its sufferers to uncontrollably use foul language? Would that make it a qualified disability under state disability protection statutes, and thereby exempt the employee from being dismissed or removed to a different job?

That's exactly the question that was put to the Michigan Court of Appeals this summer, when it heard the appeal of Karl Petzold, 22, who had worked at a Farmer Jack grocery store for 10 months. Petzold suffers from coprolalia, a rare symptom of Tourette's that causes him to utter obscenities and racial epithets, especially when he experiences stress. He was fired in 1996 after some of his outbursts offended some black customers.

The Michigan court ruled that the store acted legally. "We find it ridiculous to expect a business...to tolerate this type of language in the presence of its customers, even though we understand that because of plaintiff's condition, his utterance of obscenities and racial epithets is involuntary," the court wrote in its 3-0 decision. "We emphasize that there certainly are jobs that persons with TS and coprolalia could perform," the court said. "However, plaintiff's coprolalia renders him completely unqualified to perform this particular job, which required continual contact with members of the general public."

The issue may not yet be wrapped up yet, as Petzold's attorney has vowed to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.