Making a case for Affliction vs. Distraction

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/making-a-case-for-affliction-vs-distraction-217892.html

Cerabino: Making a case for affliction vs. distraction

By Frank Cerabino

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 6:55 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010

So a guy walks into a Starbucks coffee shop.

He sits down at a table and becomes an irritation to others by cursing and banging his hand on the wall.

Customers complain. The store manager calls 911. Deputies arrive, forcing the unruly customer to leave, and tell him he?ll be cited for trespassing if he returns .

This happens in suburban Boca Raton, a jostling, elbows-out corner of our little world where acts of public rudeness and frustrated impatience are certainly not in short supply.

But something?s special about this January 2009 incident at the Powerline Road Starbucks.

The man who got booted, Robert Friedman of New York City, suffers from Tourette?s syndrome, an affliction of uncontrollable body movements or tics, and in rare cases, unintentional verbal outbursts of foul language.

Critics side with Starbucks

State law allows businesses to remove a customer who "indulges in any language or conduct which disturbs the peace and comfort" of other customers. But it also prohibits removal on the basis of "physical disability."

And so Friedman, with the help of a local attorney, sued the coffee giant for discriminating against him because of his disability.

The story went national, and the reaction — at least judging from those who leave comments on Web sites — displays more sympathy for Starbucks than Friedman.

"Banging on walls and shouting curses may be a sign of Tourette?s," a person on a Starbucks gossip Web page wrote, "but it can also be a sign of being a disruptive dbag. How exactly are baristas supposed to know the difference?"

Another person on a Seattle site wrote: "What if I have schizophrenia and I hallucinate or have paranoid delusions and start yelling or getting violent? Should I sue Starbucks for discrimination because they won?t accommodate my ranting, suspicious, or even violent behavior?"

Panel: Employees knew him

Before the lawsuit was filed, Friedman?s complaint was investigated by the Florida Commission on Human Relations, which found "reasonable cause" for his lawsuit.

But not at first. The commission?s Office of Employment Investigations decided that Kelly Paden, the Starbucks manager, "did not know or have any reason to know" that Friedman "was disabled or that he considered himself disabled."

But the commission?s legal counsel overruled its own investigation, coming up with the opposite conclusion. Friedman had been a customer of the store before, and his condition should have been known to store employees, the commission ultimately found. And because Friedman never posed a threat to other patrons, he should have been accommodated.

"He was not even first asked if he would or could curtail his outbursts before the police were summoned to remove him from the premises," the commission?s report noted.

Frivolous lawsuit? Or window into a world that?s more complex than you imagined?

frank_cerabino@pbpost.com