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A former Baltimore County paramedic is accusing the county Fire Department of forcing him out of his job in retaliation for his complaints of racial discrimination in the agency.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, former paramedic Dontay R. Paige also says that the department denied him disability payments because of his complaints.
The suit names as defendants Baltimore County government, the Fire Department and Fire Chief John J. Hohman.
A county government spokesman said the county does not comment on matters under litigation. A spokeswoman for the Fire Department and the fire chief declined to comment for the same reason.
Paige is seeking $1 million in actual damages for lost wages and benefits, mental anguish and other economic losses, and $1 million in punitive damages.
Paige, 33, of Baltimore was a county paramedic from 1994 to 2005, except for a period in 1997 when he was “illegally forced out” but reinstated under an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settlement, according to the suit. In 2003, he began suffering from periodic coronary symptoms and was diagnosed with hypertension but continued to perform his job, the suit says.
In April 2005, Paige, who is black, filed an internal complaint with the department complaining of racial discrimination, the suit says. It provides no additional details of that complaint.
The department requested that Paige take a “workability evaluation” less than a month after he initiated the internal complaint, and in July 2005 he received notice that an independent medical evaluation had found him unfit for duty, according to the suit.
Paige then applied for disability retirement, but after seeing a second physician at the request of the Fire Department, he was found fit for duty and denied disability payments, according to the suit.
The suit calls the county’s positions on the matter “patently inconsistent.”