A grieving mother who sued her employer after she was told she had to remove pictures of her dead daughter from her office space has lost her court case. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Cecelia Ingraham sued Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical after her boss said she could no longer talk about daughter Tatiana, who died from leukemia.
She was told her colleagues were ‘uncomfortable’ with her tendency to discuss the tragedy and that she was causing a ‘disruption’.
Ms Ingraham sued for emotional distress and constructive discharge but the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, found for the company.
Ms Ingraham had worked for the firm for 12 years and by 2006, she was an administrative assistant in a marketing department.
Her only child Tatiana had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2003.
She initially fought off the disease and went into remission but it returned in 2005 and she died in May that year.
Ms Ingraham was devastated and kept pictures of her daughter and her ballet slippers displayed in her cubicle at work.
One-and-a-half years after Tatiana died, a human resources manager told Ms Ingraham’s boss he had received complaints about her conduct and interaction with other workers.
Carl DeStefanis then held a meeting with the assistant, allegedly telling her she was making her colleagues ‘uncomfortable’, according to website leagle.com.
They had reported being at a loss for ‘what else that we can say that we have not said already’ and said they had resorted to avoiding her.
Ms Ingraham was allegedly told to remove her daughter’s pictures because they were a ‘disruption’ and to stop talking about Tatiana ‘because she is dead’.
