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A woman who worked for Oprah Winfrey's OWN network claims she was subjected to a hostile work environment ... because she suffers from Multiple Sclerosis.
According to a lawsuit filed August 13 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Catherine Dunn was an assistant at OWN beginning in August 2008. She claims that during her time there, she was "subjected to a hostile work environment" because of her MS.
She claims she was forced to take a stress leave as well of a leave of absence because her MS symptoms were exacerbated because of the workplace stress.
When she was out on leave, Dunn claims she was replaced by "a non-disabled and younger employee."
Dunn is suing for wrongful termination, among other things. She is asking for unspecified damages.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From TMZ:
