Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession (6)5 May 98
Quick Summary: The methadone clinic's trash contained empty medicine bottles and used disosable paper cups. The clinic’s policy required a worker to take out the trash on trash day, Friday morning, and to physically stand by and wait to see the sanitation truck pick up and cart the trash away.
A methadone clinic served approximately six-hundred individuals daily who were recovering substance abusers. The clinic managers recognized that the clinic’s trash presented a peculiar hazard to the clinic’s clients and other addicts in the community. The trash contained empty methadone bottles and the used disposable cups from which the clinic’s clients had taken their medication.
The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, ruled the clinic had the right to terminate a worker for misconduct who took the trash out Thursday evening and left it unattended over night.
Claim of Garcia, 667 N.Y.S.2d 475 (N.Y. App., 1998).