Opinion ID: 6078
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Discharge of Other Compensation Claimants

Text: By repeating the same quotation that failed to support his last argument, Parham attempts to support his charge that Carrier retaliated against other employees who had pursued workers' compensation claims. But again, Carrier's desire to reduce the number of comp claims by improving . . . safety, is just not evidence of retaliation by Carrier against employees who had filed compensation claims. A pattern of firing employees who have filed compensation claims could be probative of retaliatory discharge,14 but not when all the employees have been discharged pursuant to the same leave 13 Carrier also rightly points out that Mr. Ellison's statement was made in response to a question that had nothing to do with the new CBA termination policy, and that he denied that the new policy was at all linked to compensation claims. 14 See, e.g., Chemical Express Carriers, Inc. v. Pina, 819 S.W..2d 585, 590 (Tex. App.))El Paso 1991, writ denied). 9 of absence policy. Here the pattern reflects application of the policy, not some invidious retaliatory motive. If Carrier had discharged twenty employees for a variety of proffered reasons, and all of them had previously filed compensation claims, we might suspect an ulterior motive. But, as all Carrier's employees on disability leave were discharged pursuant to the same written policy, the evidence demonstrates nothing more than that Carrier was applying the terms of the 1989 CBA as it understood them.15