A former Cedars-Sinai Medical Center nurse is suing the hospital, alleging her dream of a long career in the medical field was shattered by disparate treatment from Filipino supervisors and co-workers and that a false excuse was used to justify firing her for complaining about her treatment.
Camyle Meier’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges gender discrimination, retaliation, breach of contract and the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, failure to prevent harassment, discrimination and/or retaliation, failure to take corrective action and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Meier is half-white and half-Japanese. She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the suit brought Wednesday. A Cedars representative said the hospital does not comment on pending litigation.
Meier was 5 years old when she first dreamed of having a career in medicine and her goal was solidified by her sister’s contraction of meningitis, the suit states. Meier’s sibling was treated at Cedars Sinai, so the plaintiff wanted to work there, the suit states.
Meier was close to obtaining her bachelor’s degree in nursing when the hospital offered her a job, a “dream come true” for her, according to the suit.
“However, plaintiff’s dream quickly turned into a nightmare,” the suit states.
Meier was assigned to a section made up almost entirely of Filipino women who had worked together for approximately 12 years and the plaintiff “stood out like a sore thumb,” the suit states. Meier’s Filipino co-workers poured coffee into her backpack her first day and in later days her personal belongings were tampered with, the suit states.
“The message of racial animus was clear,” the suit states. “This was the beginning of plaintiff’s constant harassment, ostracization, abuse, intimidation, marginalization, bullying and undermining by the Filipina staff in her section at work.”
Meier alleges her Filipino colleagues subjected her to falsified complaints and unreasonable scrutiny and assigned her to work with the heaviest and most difficult patients, setting her up to fail by not giving her the proper training.
When Meier resisted actions she believed to be unlawful, she allegedly was retaliated against with more harassment.
She was put on leave two days before her six-month probationary period was up and she was terminated based upon an allegedly falsified time recording policy violation, which she says was different from the policy given to her previously, the suit states.
Meier maintains the allegedly discriminatory conduct she suffered violated Cedars’ own policy that forbids disparate treatment of employees on such bases as race, gender and age, while also banning retaliation against workers who file good-faith complaints.
Meier contends she has suffered both lost income as well as emotional distress because of losing her job.
“Plaintiff did nothing to create the extremely stressful situation that the defendants … caused her,” according to the suit, which does not state the year she was fired.